The Plumed Serpent

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® Book No.

Accession No.

V

J

THE PLUMED SERPENT

THE WORKS OF D. H. LAWRENCE

The White Peacock
The Trespasser
- Sons and Lovers

The Prussian Officer
The Rainbow
The Lost Girl
Women in Love
Aaron’s Rod
The Ladybird
Kangaroo

England, my England
The Boy in the Bush
St. Mawr

The Plumed Serpent
The Woman Who Rode Away
The Virgin and the Gipsy
The Man Who Died
The Lovely Lady
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Love Among the Haystacks
Sea and Sardinia
Assorted Articles
Mornings in Mexico
Twilight in Italy
A Modern Lover

Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
Fantasia of the Unconscious
Little Novels of Sicily
Studies in Classic American Literature
Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine

THE

PLUMED SERPENT

BY D. H. LAWRENCE

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD

MELBOURNE :i LONDON :: TORONTO

First published January 1926
Reprinted March 1926, January 1927, February 192ft
March 1930, March 1932, October 1933, April 1957

January 1948

F 953-3]

l

4 *

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
IT THE WINDMILL PRESS
KINGS WOOD, SURREY

CONTENTS

CHAP :

I. BEGINNINGS Of A BULL-FIGHT

II. TEA-PARTY IN TLAC'OLULA

III. FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

IV. TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY

V. THE LAKE

VI. THE MOVE DOWN THE LAKE
VU. THE PLAZA
Vin. NIGHT IN THE HOUSE

IX. CASA DE LA CUENTAS

X. DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA

XI. LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT

XU. THE FIRST WATERS
XHI. THE FIRST RAIN

XIV. HOME TO SAYULA

XV. THE WRITTEN HYMNS OF QUETZALCOATL

XVI. CIPRIANO AND KATE

XVn. FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOjP
XVUI. AUTO DA FE

XIX. THE ATTACK ON JAM1LTEPEC

XX. MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

XXI. THE OPENING OF TnE CHURCH

XXII. THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI
XXin. HUITZILOPOCHTLI*S NIGHT

XXIV. MALINTZI

XXV. TERESA

XXVI. KATE IS A WIFE
XX vn. HERE 1

I-AOE

7

26

52

77

87

106

120

142

149

165

181

194

204

221

236

245

264

287

808

827

855

377

898

413

422

443

156

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C/ass A/o.
Book No.

Accession No.

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8

CHAP : I. BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT.

It was the Sunday after Easter, and the last bull-fight of the
season in Mexico City. Four special bulls had been brought
over from Spain for the occasion, since Spanish bulls are
more fiery than Mexican. Perhaps it is the altitude, perhaps
just the spirit of the western Continent which is to blame for
the lack of “ pep,” as Owen put it, in the native animal.

Although Owen, who was a great socialist, disapproved of
bull-fights, “ We have never seen one. We shall have to
go,” he said.

“ Oh yes, I think we must see it,” said Kate.

“ And it’s our last chance,” said Owen.

Away he rushed to the place where they sold tickets, to
book seats, and Kate went with him. As she came into the
street, her heart sank. It was as if some little person inside
her were sulking and resisting. Neither she nor Owen spoke
much Spanish, there was a fluster at the ticket place, and an
unpleasant individual came forward to talk American for
them.

It was obvious they ought to buy tickets for the “ Shade.”
But they wanted to economise, and Owen said he preferred
to sit among the crowd, therefore, against the resistance of
the ticket man and the onlookers, they bought reserved
seats in the “ Sun.”

The show was on Sunday afternoon. All the tram-cars and
the frightful little Ford omnibuses called Camions were
labelled Torero, and were surging away towards Chnpul-
tepec. Kate felt that sudden dark feeling, that she didn’t
want to go.

“ Pm not very keen on going,” she said to Owen.

“ Oh, but why nbt? I don’t believe in them on principle,
but we’ve never seen one, so we shall have to go.”

Owen was an American, Kate was Irish. “ Never having
seen one ” meant “ having to go.” But it was American
logic rather than Irish, and Kate only let herself be over¬
come.

Villiers of course was keen. But then he too was Ameri¬
can, arid he too had never seen one, and being younger, more
tl^in anybody he had to go.

8

THE PLUMED SERPENT

They got into a Ford taxi and went. The busted car
careered away down the wide dismal street of asphalt and
stone and Sunday dreariness. Stone buildings in Mexico
have a peculiar hard, dry dreariness.

The taxi drew up in a side street under the big iron scaf¬
folding of the stadium. In the gutters, rather lousy men
were selling pulque and sweets, cakes, fruit, and greasy food.
Crazy motor-cars rushed up and hobbled away. Little
soldiers in washed-out cotton uniforms, pinky drab, hung
around an entrance. Above all loomed the network iron
frame of the huge, ugly stadium.

Kate felt she was going to prison. But Owen excitedly
surged to the entrance that corresponded to his ticket. In
the depths of him, he too didn’t want to go. But he was a
born American, and if anything was on show, he had to
see it. That was “ Life.”

The man who took the tickets at the entrance, suddenly,
as they were passing in, stood in front of Owen, put both
his hands on Owen’s chest and pawed down the front of
Owen’s body. Owen started, bridled, transfixed for a mo¬
ment. The fellow stood aside. Kate remained petrified.

Then Owen jerked into a smiling composure as the man
waved them on. “ Feeling for fire-arms ! ” he said, rolling
his eyes with pleased excitement at Kate.

But she had not got over the shock of horror, fearing the
fellow might paw her.

They emerged out of a tunnel in the hollow of the concrete-
and-iron amphitheatre. A real gutter-lout came to look at
their counterslips, to see which seats they had booked. He
jerked his head downwards, and slouched off. Now Kate
knew she was in a trap—a big concrete beetle trap.

They dropped down the concrete steps till they were only
three tiers from the bottom. That was their row. They
were to sit on the concrete, with a loop of thick iron between
each numbered seat. This was a reserved place in the
“ Sun.”

Kate sat gingerly between her two iron loops, and looked
vaguely around.

“ I think it’s thrilling ! ” she said.

Like most modern people, she had a will-to-happiness.

“ Isn’t it thrilling,” cried Owen, whose will-to-happiness
was almost a mania. “ Don’t you think so, Bud? ”

BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT

9

'« Why, yes, I think it may be,” said Villiers, non-com¬
mittal.

But then Villiers was young, he was only over twenty,
while Owen was over forty. The younger generation calcu¬
lates its “ happiness ” in a more business-like fashion.
Villiers was out after a thrill, but he wasn’t going to say
he’d got one till he’d got it. Kate and Owen—Kate was
also nearly forty—must enthuse a thrill, out of a sort of
politeness to the great Show-man, Providence.

“ Look here ! ” said Owen. “ Supposing we try to pro¬
tect our extremity on this concrete—” and thoughtfully he
folded his rain-coat and laid it along the concrete ledge so
that both he and Kate could sit on it.

They sat and gazed around. They were early. Patches
of people mottled the concrete slope opposite, like eruptions.
The ring just below was vacant, neatly sanded; and above
the ring, on the encircling concrete, great advertisements for
hats, with a picture of a city-man’s straw hat, and advertise¬
ments for spectacles, with pairs of spectacles supinely folded,
glared and shouted.

“ Where is the * Shade ’ then? ” said Owen, twisting his
neck.

At the top of the amphitheatre, near the sky, were con¬
crete boxes. This was the “ Shade,” where anybody who
was anything sat.

“ Oh but,” said Kate, “ I don’t want to be perched right
up there, so far away.”

“ Why no 1 said Owen. “ We’re much better where we

are, m our * Sun,’ which isn’t going to shine a great deal
after all.”

The sky was cloudy, preparing for the rainy season.

It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon, and the

crowd was filling in, but still only occupied patches of the

bare concrete. The lower tiers were reserved, so the bulk of

« sat m the mid-way levels, and gentry like our
trio were more or less isolated.

the . au tl en ? e was alrea dy a mob, mostly of fattish
^wn men m black tight suits and little straw hats, and a

mrang-m of the dark-faced labourers in big hats. The men

tort *hLd? <T ere £ r °, ba u bly em P lQ y ees an <* clerks and fac-
rh Z h ^..‘ . Some ha< * brought their women, in sky-blue
hiffon with brown chiffon hats and faces powdered to look

10 THE PLUMED SERPENT

like white marshmallows. Some were families with two nr
three children.

The fun began. The game was to snatch the hard straw
hat off some fellow’s head, and send it skimming away down
the slope of humanity, where some smart bounder down
below would catch it and send it skimming across in another
direction. There were shouts of jeering pleasure from the
mass, which rose almost to a yell as seven straw hats were
skimming, meteor-like, at one moment across the slope of
people.

“ Look at that ! ” said Owen. “ Isn’t that fun ! ”

“ No,” said Kate, her little alter ego speaking out for
once, in spite of her will-to-happiness. “ No, I don’t like it.
I really hate common people.”

As a socialist, Owen disapproved, and as a happy man, he
was disconcerted. Because his own real self, as far as he had
any left, hated common rowdiness just as much as Kate did.

“ It’s awfully smart though ! ” he said, trying to laugh in
sympathy with the mob. “ There now, see that ! ”

“ Yes, it’s quite smart, but I’m glad it’s not my hat,”
said Villiers.

“ Oh, it’s all in the game,” said Owen largely.

But he was uneasy. He was wearing a big straw hat of
native make, conspicuous in the comparative isolation of the
lower tiers. After a lot of fidgeting, he took off this hat and
put it on his knees. But unfortunately he had a very defi¬
nitely bald spot on a sunburnt head.

Behind, above, sat a dense patch of people in the unre¬
served section. Already they were throwing things. Burn!
came an orange, aimed at Owen’s bald spot, and hitting him
on the shoulder. He glared round rather ineffectually
through his big shell spectacles.

“ I’d keep my hat on if I were you,” said the cold voice
of Villiers.

“ Yes, I think perhaps it’s wiser,” said Owen, with as¬
sumed nonchalance, putting on his hat again.

Whereupon a banana skin rattled on Villiers’ tidy and
ladylike little panama. He glared round coldly, like a bird
that would stab with its beak if it got the chance, but which
would fly away at the first real menace.

“ How I detest them ! ” said Kate.

A diversion was created by the entrance, opposite, of the

beginnings of a bull-fight

military bands, with their silver and brass instruments under
their arms. There were three sets. The chief band climbed
and sat on the right, in the big bare tract of concrete re¬
served for the Authorities. These musicians wore dark grey
uniforms trimmed with rose colour, and made Kate feel al¬
most reassured, as if it were Italy and not Mexico City. A
silver band in pale buff uniforms sat opposite our party, high
up across the hollow distance, and still a third “ musica ”
threaded away to the left, on the remote scattered hillside
of the amphitheatre. The newspapers had said that the
President would attend. But the Presidents are scarce at
bull-fights in Mexico, nowadays.

There sat the bands, in as much pomp as they could
muster, but they did not begin to play. Great crowds now
patched the slopes, but there were still bare tracts, especi¬
ally in the Authorities’ section. Only a little distance above
Kate’s row was a mass of people, as it were impending; a
very uncomfortable sensation.

It was three o’clock, and the crowds had a new diversion.
The bands, due to strike up at three, still sat there in lordly
fashion, sounding not a note.

“ La musica 1 La musica I ” shouted the mob, with the
voice of mob authority. They were the People, and the
revolutions had been their revolutions, and they had won
them all. The bands were their bands, present for their
amusement.

But the bands were military bands, and it was the army
which had won all the revolutions. So the revolutions were
their revolutions, and they were present for their own glory
alone.

Musica panada toca mal tono.

Spasmodically, the insolent yelling of the mob rose and
subsided. La musica l La musica t The shout became
brutal and violent. Kate always remembered it. La musica!
The band peacocked its nonchalance. The shouting was a
great yell : the degenerate mob of Mexico City 1

At length, at its own leisure, the band in grey with dark
rose facing? struck up : crisp, martial, smart.

That’s fine 1 ” said Owen. “ But that’s really good!
And it s the first time I’ve heard a good band in Mexico, a
band with any backbone.”

The music was smart, but it was brief. The band seemed

12

THE PLUMED SERPENT

scarcely to have started, when the piece was over. The
musicians took their instruments from their mouths with a
gesture of dismissal. They played just to say they’d played,
making it as short as possible.

Music a pagada toca mal tono.

There was a ragged interval, then the silver band piped up.
And at last it was half-past three, or more.

Whereupon, at some given signal, the masses in the
middle, unreserved seats, suddenly burst and rushed down
on to the lowest, reserved seats. It was a crash like a burst
reservoir, and the populace in black Sunday suits poured
down round and about our astonished, frightened trio. And
in two minutes it was over. Without any pushing or shov¬
ing. Everybody careful, as far as possible, not to touch any¬
body else. You don’t elbow your neighbour if he’s got a
pistol on his hip and a knife at his belly. So all the seats
in the lower tiers filled in one rush, like the flowing of water.

Kate now sat among the crowd. But her seat, fortun¬
ately, was above one of the track-ways that went round the
arena, so at least she would not have anybody sitting be¬
tween her knees.

Men went uneasily back and forth along this gangway
past the feet, wanting to get in next their friends, but never
venturing to ask. Three seats away, on the same row, sat
a Polish bolshevist fellow who had met Owen. He leaned
over and asked the Mexican next to Owen if he might change
seats with him. “ No,” said the Mexican. “ I’ll sit in my
own seat.”

“ Muy bien, Senor , muy bien! ” said the Pole.

The show did not begin, and men like lost mongrels still
prowled back and forth on the track that was next step down
from Kate’s feet. They began to take advantage of the
ledge on which rested the feet of our party, to squat there.

Down sat a heavy fellow, plumb between Owen’s knees.

“ I hope they won’t sit on irrij feet,” said Kate anxiously.

“ We w’on’t let them,” said Villiers, with bird-like deci¬
sion. “ Why don’t you shove him off, Owen? Shove him
off?”

And Villiers glared at the Mexican fellow esconced between
Owen’s legs. Owen flushed, and laughed uncomfortably.
He was not good at shoving people off. The Mexican began
to look round at the three angry white people.

BEGINNINGS OF A BUHL-FIGHT

18

And in another moment, another fat Mexican in a black
suit and a little black hat was lowering himself into Villiers’
foot-space. But Villiers was too quick for him. He quickly
brought his feet together under the man’s sinking posterior,
so the individual subsided uncomfortably on to a pair of
boots, and at the same time felt a hand shoving him quietly
but determinedly on the shoulder.

“ No ! ” Villiers was saying in good American. “ This
place is for my feet! Get off 1 You get off 1 ”

And he continued, quietly but very emphatically, to push
the Mexican’s shoulder, to remove him.

The Mexican half raised himself, and looked round murder¬
ously at Villiers. Physical violence was being offered, and
the only retort was death. But the young American’s face
was so cold and abstract, only the eyes showing a primitive,
bird-like fire, that the Mexican was nonplussed. And Kate’s
eyes were blazing with Irish contempt.

The fellow struggled with his Mexican city-bred inferiority
complex. He muttered an explanation in Spanish that he was
only sitting there for a moment, till he could join his friends
—waving his hand towards a lower tier. Villiers did not
understand a word, but he re-iterated :

“ I don’t care what it is. This place is for my feet , and
you don’t sit there.”

Oh, home of liberty ! Oh, land of the free 1 Which of these
two men was to win in the struggle for conflicting liberty?
Was the fat fellow free to sit between Villiers’ feet, or was
Villiers free to keep his foot-space ?

There are all sorts of inferiority complex, and the city
Mexican has a very strong sort, that makes him all the more
aggressive, once it is roused. Therefore the intruder lowered
his posterior with a heavy, sudden bounce on Villiers* feet,
and Villiers, out of very distaste, had had to extricate his
feet from such a compression. The young man’s face went
white at the nostrils, and his eyes took on that bright
abstract look of pure democratic anger. He pushed the fat
shoulders more decisively, repeating :

! G ° aw ? y 1 You ’ re n °t to sit there.”

I he Mexican, on his own ground, and heavy on his own
base, let himself be shoved, oblivious,

“Insolence I ” said Kate loudly. “ Insolence ! ”

ohe glared at the fat back in the shoddily-fitting black

14

THE PLUMED SERPENT

coat, which looked as if a woman dressmaker had made it,
with loathing. How could any man’s coat-collar look so
home-made, so en faniiile!

Villiers remained with a fixed, abstract look on his thin
face, rather like a death’s head. All his American will was
summoned up, the bald eagle of the north bristling in every
feather. The fellow should not sit there.—But how to re¬
move him ?

The young man sat tense with will to annihilate his beetle¬
like intruder, and Kate used all her Irish malice to help
him.

“ Don’t you wonder who was his tailor? ” she asked, with
a flicker in her voice.

Villiers looked at the femalish black coat of the Mexican,
and made an arch grimace at Kate.

“ I should say he hadn’t one. Perhaps did it himself.”

“ Very likely ! ” Kate laughed venomously.

It was too much. The man got up and betook himself,
rather diminished, to another spot.

“ Triumph I ” 6aid Kate. “ Can’t you do the same,
Owen ? ”

Owen laughed uncomfortably, glancing down at the man
between his knees as he might glance at a dog with rabies,
when it had its back to him.

“ Apparently not yet, unfortunately,” he said, with some
constraint, turning his nose away again from the Mexican,
who was using him as a sort of chair-back.

There was an exclamation. Two horsemen in gay uniforms
and bearing long staffs had suddenly ridden into the ring.
They went round the arena, then took up their posts, sentry-
wise, on either side the tunnel entrance through which they
had come in.

In marched a little column of four toreadors wearing tight
uniforms plastered with silver embroidery. They divided,
and marched smartly in opposite directions, two and two,
around the ring, till they came to the place facing the section
of the Authorities, where they made their salute.

So this was a bull-fight 1 Kate already felt a chill of dis¬
gust.

In the seats of the Authorities were very few people, and
certainly no sparkling ladies in high tortoise-shell combs and
lace mantillas. A few common-looking people, bourgeois

BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT

16

with not much taste, and a couple of officers in uniform.
The President had not come.

There was no glamour, no charm. A few commonplace
people in an expanse of concrete were the elect, and below,
four grotesque and effeminate looking fellows in tight, ornate
clothes were the heroes. With their rather fat posteriors
and their squiffs of pigtails and their clean-shaven faces,
they looked like eunuchs, or women in tight pants, these
precious toreadors.

The last of Kate’s illusions concerning bull-fights came
down with a flop. These were the darlings of the mob ?
These were the gallant toreadors 1 Gallant? Just about as
gallant as assistants in a butcher’s shop. Lady-killers?
Ughl

There was an Ah 1 of satisfaction from the mob. Into the
ring suddenly rushed a smallish, dun-coloured bull with long
flourishing horns. He ran out, blindly, as if from the dark,
probably thinking that now he was free. Then he stopped
short, seeing he was not free, but surrounded in an unknown
way. He was utterly at a loss.

A toreador came forward and switched out a pink cloak
like a fan not far from the bull’s nose. The bull gave a
playful little prance, neat and pretty, and charged mildly
on the cloak. The toreador switched the cloak over the
animal’s head, and the neat little bull trotted on round the
ring, looking for a way to get out.

Seeing the wooden barrier around the arena, finding he

was able to look over it, he thought he might as well take

the leap. So over he went into the corridor or passage-way

which circled the ring, and in which stood the servants of
the arena.

Just as nimbly, these servants vaulted over the barrier
mto the arena, that was now bull-less.

The bull in the gangway trotted inquiringly round till he

J n opening on to the arena again. So back he
trotted into the ring.

And back into the gangway vaulted the servants, where
they stood again to look on. *

f bul1 trotted waveringly and somewhat irritated. The

™ hts°va^ Ved the l F i°u kS at him ’ * nd he served on.
, va ^ ue course took him to where one of the horsemen

with lances sat motionless on his horse.

16

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Instantly, in a pang of alarm, Kate noticed that the horse
was thickly blindfolded with a black cloth. Yes, and so was
the horse on which sat the other picador.

The bull trotted suspiciously up to the motionless horse
bearing the rider with the long pole; a lean old horse that
would never move till Doomsday, unless someone shoved it.

O shades of Don Quixote ! Oh four Spanish horsemen of
the Apocalypse ! This was surely one of them.

The picador pulled his feeble horse round slowly, to face
the bull, and slowly he leaned forward and shoved his lance-
point into the bull’s shoulder. The bull, as if the horse were
a great wasp that had stung him deep, suddenly lowered his
head in a jerk of surprise and lifted his horns straight up
into the horse’s abdomen. And without more ado, over went
horse and rider, like a tottering monument upset.

The rider scrambled from under the horse and went run¬
ning away with his lance. The old horse, in complete dazed
amazement, struggled to rise, as if overcome with dumb
incomprehension. And the bull, with a red place on his
shoulder welling a trickle of dark blood, stood looking around
in equally hopeless amazement.

But the wound was hurting. He saw the queer sight of the
horse half reared from the ground, trying to get to its feet.
And he smelled blood and bowels.

So rather vaguely, as if not quite knowing what he ought
to do, the bull once more lowered his head and pushed his
sharp, flourishing horns in the horse’s belly, working them
up and down inside there with a sort of vague satisfaction.

Kate had never been taken so completely by surprise in
all her life. She had still cherished some idea of a gallant
show. And before she knew where she was, she was watch¬
ing a bull whose shoulders trickled blood goring his horns
up and down inside the belly of a prostrate and feebly
plunging old horse.

The shock almost overpowered her. She had come for a
gallant show. This she had paid to see. Human cowardice
and beastliness, a smell of blood, a nauseous whiff of
bursten bowels ! She turned her face away.

When she looked again, it was to see the horse feebly and
dazedly walking out of the ring, with a great ball of its own
entrails hanging out of its abdomen and swinging reddish
against its own legs as it automatically moved.

BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT

And once more, the shock of amazement almost made her
lose consciousness. She heard the confused small applause
of amusement from the mob. And that Pole, to whom Owen
had introduced her, leaned over and said to her, in horrible

English :

“ Now, Miss Leslie, you are seeing Life ! Now you will
have something to write about, in your letters to England.”

She looked at his unwholesome face in complete repulsion,
and wished Owen would not introduce her to such sordid

individuals.

She looked at Owen. His nose had a sharp look, like a
little boy who may make himself sick, but who is watching
at the shambles with all his eyes, knowing it is forbidden.

Villiers, the younger generation, looked intense and
abstract, getting the sensation. He would not even feel sick.
He was just getting the thrill of it, without emotion, coldly
and scientifically, but very intent.

And Kate felt a real pang of hatred against this Ameri¬
canism which is coldly and unscrupulously sensational.

“ Why doesn’t the horse move ? Why doesn’t it run away
from the bull ? ” she asked in repelled amazement, of Owen.

Owen cleared his throat.

“ Didn’t you see ? It was blindfolded,” he said.
“ But can’t it smell the bull ? ” she asked.

“ Apparently not.—They bring the old wrecks here to
finish them off.—I know it’s awful, but it’s part of the
game.”

How Kate hated phrases like “ pa rt of the game.*’ What
do they mean, anyhow ! She felt utterly humiliated, crushed
by a sense of human indecency, cowardice of two-legged
humanity. In this “ brave ” show she felt nothing but
reeking cowardice. Her breeding and her natural pride were
outraged.

The ring servants had cleaned away the mess and spread
new sand. The toreadors were playing with the bull, un¬
furling their foolish cloaks at arm’s length. And the animal,
with the red sore running on his shoulder, foolishly capered
and ran from one rag to the other, here and there.

For the first time, a bull seemed to her a fool. She had
always been afraid of bulls, fear tempered with reverence of
the great Mithraic beast. And now she saw how stupid he
was, in spite of his long horns and his massive maleness.

18

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Blindly and stupidly he ran at the rag, each time, and the
toreadors skipped like fat-hipped girls showing off. Probably
it needed skill and courage, but it looked silly.

Blindly and foolishly the bull ran ducking its horns each
time at the rag, just because the rag fluttered.

“ Run at the men, idiot ! ” said Kate aloud, in her over¬
wrought impatience. “ Run at the men, not at the cloaks.”

“ They never do, isn’t it curious 1 ” replied Villiers, with
cool scientific interest. “ They say no toreador will face a
cow, because a cow always goes for him instead of the cloak.
If a bull did that there’d be no bull-fights. Imagine it 1 ”

She was bored now. The nimbleness and the skipping
tricks of the toreadors bored her. Even when one of the
bandcrilleros reared himself on tiptoe, his plump posterior
much in evidence, and from his erectness pushed two razor-
sharp darts with frills at the top into the bull’s shoulder,
neatly and smartly, Kate felt no admiration. One of the
darts fell out, anyway, and the bull ran on with the other
swinging and waggling in another bleeding place.

The bull now wanted to get away, really. He leaped the
fence again, quickly, into the attendants’ gangway. The
attendants vaulted over into the arena. The bull trotted
in the corridor, then nicely leaped back. The attendants
vaulted once more into the corridor. The bull trotted round
the arena, ignoring the toreadors, and leaped once more into
the gangway. Over vaulted the attendants.

Kate was beginning to be amused, now that the mongrel
men were skipping for safety.

The bull was in the ring again, running from cloak to
cloak, foolishly. A banderillero was getting ready with two
more darts. But first another picador put nobly forward on
his blindfolded old horse. The bull ignored this little lot
too, and trotted away again, as if all the time looking for
something, excitedly looking fgr something. He stood still
and excitedly pawed the ground, as if he wanted something.
A toreador advanced and swung a cloak. Up pranced the
bull, tail in air, and with a prancing bound charged—upon
the rag, of course. The toreador skipped round with a
ladylike skip, then tripped to another point. Very pretty !

The bull, in the course of his trotting and prancing and
pawing, had once more come near the bold picador. The
bold picador shoved forward his ancient steed, leaned for-

19

BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT

wards, and pushed the point of his lance in the bull’s
shoulder. The bull looked up, irritated and arrested. What

the devil ! .

He saw the horse and rider. The horse stood with that

feeble monumentality of a milk horse, patient as if between
the shafts, waiting while his master delivered the milk. How
strange it must have been to him when the bull, giving a
little bound like a dog, ducked its head and dived its horns
upwards into his belly, rolling him over with his rider as one
might push over a hat-stand.

The bull looked with irritable wonder at the incomprehen¬
sible medley of horse and rider kicking on the ground a few
yards away from him. He drew near to investigate. The
rider scrambled out and bolted. And the toreadors running
up with their cloaks, drew off the bull. He went caracoling
round, charging at more silk-lined rags.

Meanwhile an attendant had got the horse On its feet again,
and was leading it totteringly into the gangway and round
to the exit, under the Authorities. The horse crawled slowly.
The bull, running from pink cloak to red cloak, rag to rag,
and never catching anything, was getting excited, impatient
of the rag game. He jumped once more into the gangway
and started running, alas, on towards where the wounded
horse was still limping its way to the exit.

Kate knew what was coming. Before she could look
away, the bull had charged on the limping horse from be¬
hind, the attendants had fled, the horse was up-ended ab¬
surdly, one of the bull’s horns between his hind legs and
deep in his inside. Down went the horse, collapsing in front,
but his rear was still heaved up, with the bull’s horn working
vigorously up and down inside him, while he lay on his neck
all twisted. And a huge heap of bowels coming out. And
a nauseous stench. And the cries of pleased amusement
among the crowd.

This pretty event took place on Kate’s side of the ring,
and not far from where she sat, below her. Most of the
people were on their feet craning to look down over the edge
to watch the conclusion of this delightful spectacle.

Kate knew if she saw any more she would go into hys¬
terics. She was getting beside herself.

She looked swiftly at Owen, who looked like a guilty boy

spellbound.

20

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ I’m going ! ” she said, rising.

“ Go jfg; ’’he cried, in wonder and dismay, his flushed
face and his bald flushed forehead a picture, looking up at

But she had already turned, and was hurrying away to¬
wards the mouth of the exit-tunnel.

Owen came running after her, flustered, and drawn in all
directions.

“ Really going ! ” he said in chagrin, as she came to the
high, vaulted exit-tunnel.

“ I must. I’ve got to get out,” she cried. “ Don’t you

come. J

“ Really ! ” he echoed, torn all ways.

The scene was creating a very hostile attitude in the audi¬
ence. To leave the bull-fight is a national insult.

“ Don’t come ! Really ! I shall take a tram-car,” she
said hurriedly.

“ Really ! Do you really think you’ll be all right? ”

Perfectly. You stay. Goodbye ! I can’t smell any more
of this stink.”

He turned like Orpheus looking back into hell, and waver¬
ing made towards his seat again.

It was not so easy, because many people were now on their
feet and crowding to the exit vault. The rain which had
sputtered a few drops suddenly fell in a downward splash.
People were crowding to shelter; but Owen, unheeding^
fought his way back to his seat, and sat in his rain-coat with
the rain pouring on his bald head. He was as nearly in
hysterics as Kate. But he was convinced that this was life.
He was seeing LIFE, and what can an American do
more !

“ They might just as well sit and enjoy somebody else’.?
diarrhoea ” was the thought that passed through Kate’s dis¬
tracted but still Irish mind.

There she was in the great concrete archway under the
stadium, with the lousy press of the audience crowding in
after her. Facing outwards, she saw the straight downpour
of the rain, and a little oeyond, the great wooden gates that
opened to the free street. Oh to be out, to be out of this,
to be free !

But it was pouring tropical rain. The little shoddy
soldiers were pressing back under the brick gateway, for

BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT

21

shelter. And the gates were almost shut. Perhaps they
would not let her out. Oh horror !

She stood hovering in front of the straight downpour.
She would have dashed out, but for the restraining thought
of what she would look like when her thin gauze dress was
plastered to her body by drenching rain. On the brink she
hovered.

Behind her, from the inner end of the stadium tunnel, the
people were surging in in waves. She stood horrified and
alone, looking always out to freedom. The crowd was in a
state of excitement, cut off in its sport, on tenterhooks lest
it should miss anything. Thank goodness the bulk stayed
near the inner end of the vault. She hovered near the outer
end, ready to bolt at any moment.

The rain crashed steadily down.

She waited on the outer verge, as far from the people ns
possible. Her face had that drawn, blank look of a woman
near hysterics. She could not get out of her eyes the last
picture of the horse lying twisted on its neck with its hind¬
quarters hitched up and the horn of the bull goring slowly
and rhythmically in its vitals. The horse so utterly passive
and grotesque. And all its bowels slipping on to the ground.

But a new terror was the throng inside the tunnel en¬
trance. The big arched place was filling up, but still the
crowd did not come very near her. They pressed towards
the inner exit.

They were mostly loutish men in city clothes, the mongrel
men of a mongrel city. Two men stood making water
against the wall, ip the interval of their excitement. One
father had kindly brought his little boys to the show, and
stood in fat, sloppy paternal benevolence above them. They
were pale mites, the elder about ten years old, highly dressed
up in Sunday clothes. And badly they needed protecting
from that paternal benevolence, for they were oppressed,
peaked and a bit wan from the horrors. To those children
at least bull-fights did not come natural, but would be an
acquired taste. There were other children, however, and
fat mammas in black satin that was greasy and grey at the
edges with an overflow of face-powder. These fat mammas
had a pleased, excited look in their eyes, almost sexual, and
very distasteful in contrast to their soft passive bodies.

Kate shivered a little in her thin frock, for the ponderous

22 THE PLUMED SERPENT

rain had a touch of ice. She stared through the curtain of
water at the big rickety gates of the enclosure surrounding
the amphitheatre, at the midget soldiers cowering in their
shoddy, pink-white cotton uniforms, and at the glimpse of
the squalid street outside, now running with dirty brown
streams. The vendors had all taken refuge, in dirty-white
clusters, in the pulque shops, one of which was sinisterly
named : A Ver que Sale.

She was afraid more of the repulsiveness than of anything.
She had been in many cities of the world, but Mexico had an
underlying ugliness, a sort of squalid evil, which made
Naples seem debonair in comparison. She was afraid, she
dreaded the thought that anything might really touch her
in this town, and give her the contagion of its crawling sort
of evil. But she knew that the one thing she must do was
to keep her head.

A little officer in uniform, wearing a big, pale-blue cape,
made his way through the crowd. He was short, dark,
and had a little black beard like an imperial. He came
through the people from the inner entrance, and cleared his
way with a quiet, silent unobtrusiveness, yet with the pecu¬
liar heavy Indian momentum. Even touching the crowd
delicately with his gloved hand, and murmuring almost in-
audibly the Con pcrtniso! formula, he seemed to be keeping
himself miles away from contact. He was bruv too : be¬
cause there was just the chance some lout migh‘ shoot him
because of his uniform. The people knew him too. Kate
could tell that by the flicker of a jeering, self-conscious
bmile that passed across many faces, and the exclamation :
“ General Viedma ! Don Cipriano ! ”

He came owards Kate, saluting and bowing with a brittle
shyness.

•• I am General Viedma. Did you wish to leave? Let me
get you an automobile,” he said, in very English English,
that sounded strange from his dark face, and a little stiff
on his soft tongue.

His eyes were dark, quick, with the glassy darkness that
she found so wearying. But they were tilted up with a
curious slant, under arched black brows. It gave him an
odd look of detachment, as if he looked at life with raised
brows. His manner was superficially assured, underneath
perhaps half-savage, shy and farouche, and deprecating.

28

BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT

“ Thank you so much,” she said.

He called to a soldier in the gateway.

“ I will send you in the automobile of my friend, he
said. “ It will be better than a taxi. You don’t like the

bull-fight? ” , „

“ No l Horrible ! ” said Kate. “ But do get me a yellow

taxi. That is quite safe.”

“ Well, the man has gone for the automobile. You arc

English, yes? ”

“ Irish,” said Kate.

“ Ah Irish ! ” he replied, with the flicker of a smile.

“ You speak English awfully well,” she said.

“ Yes ! I was educated there. I was in England seven

years.”

** Were you ! My name is Mrs Leslie.”

« Ah Leslie 1 I knew James Leslie in Oxford. He was
killed in the war.”

“ Yes. That was my husband’s brother.**

“ Oh really 1 ”

“ How small the world is ! ” said Kate.

“ Yes indeed ! ” said the general.

There was a pause.

“ And the gentlemen who are with you, they are—? **

** American,” said Kate.

** Ah Americans ! Ah yes 1 **

** The older one is my cousin—Owen Rhys.”

“ Owen Rhys 1 Ah yes 1 I think I saw in the newspaper
you were here in town—visiting Mexico.”

He spoke in a peculiar quiet voice; rather suppressed, and
his quick eyes glanced at her, and at his surroundings, like
those of a man perpetually suspecting an ambush. But his
face had a certain silent hostility, under his kindness. He
was saving his nation’s reputation.

“ They did put in a not very complimentary note,” said
Kate. “ I think they don’t like it that we stay in the Hotel
San Remo. It is too poor and foreign. But we are none of
us rich, and we like it better than those other places.”

“ The Hotel San Remo? Where is that? ”

“ In the Avenida del Peru. Won’t you come and see us
there, and meet my cousin and Mr Thompson ? ”

M Thank you! Thank you 1 I hardly ever go out. But
I will call if I may, and then perhaps you will all

24 THE PLUMED SERPENT

come to see me at the house of my friend, Seiior Ramon
Carrasco. ”

“ We should like to,” said Kate.

“ Very well. And shall I call, then? ”

She told him a time, and added :

“ You mustn’t be surprised at the hotel. It is small, and
nearly all Italians. But we tried some of the big ones, and
there is such a feeling of lowness about them, awful! I
can’t stand the feeling of prostitution. And then the cheap
insolence of the servants. No, my little San Remo may be
rough, but it’s kindly and human, and it’s not rotten. It
is like Italy as I always knew it, decent, and with a bit of
human generosity. I do think Mexico City is evil, under¬
neath.”

“ Well,” he said, “ the hotels are bad. It is unfortunate,
but the foreigners seem to make the Mexicans worse than
they are, naturally. And Mexico, or something in it, cer¬
tainly makes the foreigners worse than they are at home.”

He spoke with a certain bitterness.

“ Perhaps we should all stay away,” she said.

“ Perhaps ! ” he said, lifting his shoulders a little. “ But
I don’t think so.”

He relapsed into a slightly blank silence. Peculiar how
his feelings flushed over him, anger, diffidence, wistfulness,
assurance, and an anger again, all in little flushes, and some¬
what naive.

“ It doesn’t rain so much,” said Kate. “ When will the
car come ? ”

“ It is here now. It has been waiting some time,” he
replied.

“ Then I’ll go,” she said.

“ Well,” he replied, looking at the sky. “ It is still rain-'
ing, and your dress is very thin. You must take my cloak.”

“ Oh 1 ” she said, shrinking, “ It is only two yards.”

“ It is still raining fairly fast. Better either wait, or let
me lend you my cloak.”

He swung out of his cloak with a quick little movement,
and held it up to her. Almost without realising, she turned
her shoulders to him, and he put the cape on her. She
caught it round her, and ran out to the gate, as if escaping.
He followed, with a light yet military stride. The soldiers
saluted rather slovenly, and he responded briefly.

BEGINNINGS OF a BULL-FIGHT

A not very new Fiat stood at the gate, with a chauffeur
in a short red-and-black check coat. The chauffeur opened
the door. Kate slipped off the cloak as she got in, and
handed it back. He stood with it over his arm.

“ Goodbye ! ” she said. “ Thank you ever so much. And
we shall see you on Tuesday. Do put your cape on.”

“ On Tuesday, yes. Hotel San Remo. Calle de Peru,
he added to the chauffeur. Then turning again to Kate :
“ The hotel, no ? ”

“ Yes,” she said, and instantly changed. “ No, take me
to Sanborn’s, where I can sit in a corner and drink tea to
comfort me.”

“ To comfort you after the bull-fight? ” he said, with
another quick smile. “ To Sanborn’s, Gonzalez.”

He saluted and bowed and closed the door. The car

started.

Kate sat back, breathing relief. Relief to get away from
that beastly place. Relief even to get away from that nice
man. He was awfully nice. But he made her feel she
wanted to get away from him too. There was that heavy,
black Mexican fatality about him, that put a burden on her.
His quietness, and his peculiar assurance, almost aggressive;
and at the same time, a nervousness, an uncertainty. His
heavy sort of gloom, and yet his quick, naive, childish smile.
Those black eyes, like black jewels, that you couldn’t look
into, and which were so watchful; yet which, perhaps, were
waiting for some sign of recognition and of warmth ! Per¬
haps 1

She felt again, as she felt before, that Mexico lay in her
destiny almost as_a doom. -Something so heavy, so oppres-
siveriikethe folds of some huge serpent that seemed as if it
could hardly raise itself.

She was glad to get to her corner in the tea-house, to feel
herself in the cosmopolitan world once more, to drink her
tea and eat strawberry shortcake and try to forget.

CHAP : n. TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA.

Owen came back to the hotel at about half-past six, tired,
excited, a little guilty, and a good deal distressed at having
let Kate go alone. And now the whole thing was over, rather
dreary in spirit.

“ Oh, how did you get on ? ” he cried, the moment he saw
her, afraid almost like a boy of his own sin of omission.

“ I got on perfectly. Went to Sanborn’s for tea, and had
strawberry short-cake—so good ! ”

“ Oh, good for you ! ” he laughed in relief. “ Then you
weren’t too much overcome 1 I’m so glad. I had such awful
qualms after I’d let you go. Imagined all the things that
are supposed to happen in Mexico—chauffeur driving away
with you into some horrible remote region, and robbing you
and all that—but then I knew really you’d be all right. Oh,
the time I had—the rain !—and the people throwing things
at my bald patch—and those horses—wasn’t that horrible?
—I wonder I’m still alive.” And he laughed with tired ex¬
citement, putting his hand over his stomach and rolling his
eyes.

“ Aren’t you drenched? ” she said.

“ Drenched ! ” he replied. “ Or at least I was. I’ve
dried off quite a lot. My rain-coat is no good—I don’t know
why I don’t buy another. Oh, but what a time ! The rain
streaming on my bald head, and the crowd behind throwing
oranges at it. Then simply gored in my inside about letting
you go alone. Yet it was the only bull-fight I shall ever see.
I came then before it was over. Bud wouldn’t come. I
suppose he’s still there.”

“ Was it as awful as the beginning? ” she asked.

“ No ! No 1 It wasn’t. The first was worst—that horse-
shambles. Oh, they killed tvvo more horses. And five bulls !
Yes, a regular butchery. But some of it was very neat work;
those toreadors did some very pretty feats. One stood on his
cloak while a bull charged him.” •

“ I think,” interrupted Kate, “ if I knew that some of
those toreadors were going to be tossed by the bull, I’d go to
see another bull-fight. Ugh, how I detest them ! The longer
I live the more loathesome the human species becomes to
me. How much nicer the bulls are ! ”

26

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

27

« Oh, quite ! ” said Owen vaguely. “ Exactly. But still
there was some very skilful work, very pretty. Really very
plucky.”

“ Yah ! ” snarled Kate. “ Plucky I They with all their
knives and their spears and cloaks and darts—and they know
just how a bull will behave. It’s just a performance of
human beings torturing animals, with those common fellows
showing off, how smart they are at hurting a bull. Dirty
little boys maiming flies—that’s what they are. Only grown¬
up, they are bastards, not boys. Oh, 1 wish I could be a
bull, just for five minutes. Bastard, that’s what I call
it! ”

“ Well I ” laughed Owen uneasily, “ It is rather.”

“ Call that manliness 1 ” cried Kate. “ Then thank God
a million times that I’m a woman, and know poltroonery and
dirty-mindedness when I see it.”

Again Owen laughed uncomfortably.

“ Go upstairs and change,” she said. “ You’ll die.”

“ I think I’d better. I feel I might die any minute, as a
matter of fact; Well, till dinner then. I’ll tap at your door
in half an hour.”

Kate sat trying to sew, but her hand trembled. She could
not get the bull-ring out of her mind, and something felt
damaged in her inside.

She straightened herself, and sighed. She was really very
an gry* too, with Owen. He was naturally so sensitive, and
so kind. But he had the insidious modern disease of toler¬
ance. He must tolerate everything, even a thing that
revolted him. He would call it Life ! He would feel he
had lived this afternoon. Greedy even for the most sordid
sensations.

Whereas she felt as if she had eaten something which was
giving her ptomaine poisoning. If that was life !

Ah men, men I They all had this soft rottenness of the
soul, a strange perversity which made even the squalid, re-
pulsive things seem part of life to them. Life I And what
u life? A louse lying on its back and kicking? Ugh !

At about seven o’clock Villiers came tapping. He looked
wan, peaked, but like a bird that had successfully pecked
a bellyful of garbage. ^

«** was GREAT 1 ” he said, lounging on one hip.

GREAT! They killed seven BULLS.”

28 THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ No calves, unfortunately,” said Kate, suddenly furious
again.

He paused to consider the point, then laughed. Her anger
was another slight sensational amusement to him.

“ No, no calves,” he said. “ The calves have come home
to be fattened. But several more horses after you’d gone.”

“ I don’t want to hear,” she said coldly.

He laughed, feeling rather heroic. After all, one must be
able to look on blood and bursten bowels calmly : even with
a certain thrill. The young hero ! But there were dark rings
round his eyes, like a debauch.

“ Oh but! ” he began, making a rather coy face. “ Don’t
you want to hear what I did after ! I went to the hotel of
the chief toreador, and saw him lying on his bed all dressed
up, smoking a fat cigar. Rather like a male Venus who is
never undressed. So funny ! ”

“ Who took you there ? ” she said.

“ That Pole, you remember?—and a Spaniard who talked
English. The toreador was great, lying on his bed in all his
get-up, except his shoes, and quite a crowd of men going over
it all again— wawaivawawa ! —you never heard such a row ! ”

“ Aren’t you wet? ” said Kate.

“ No, not at all. I’m perfectly dry. You see I had my
coat. Only my head, of course. My poor hair was all
streaked down my face like streaks of dye.” He wiped his
thin hair across his head with rather self-conscious humour.
“ Hasn’t Owen come in ? ” he asked.

“ Yes, he’s changing.”

“ Well I’ll go up. I suppose it’s nearly supper time. Oh
yes, it’s after /” At which discovery he brightened as if he’d
received a gift.

“ Oh by the way, how did you get on ? Rather mean of
us to let you go all alone like that,” he said, as he hung
poised in the open doorway.

” Not at all,” she said. “ You wanted to stay. And T
can look after myself, at my time of life.”

“ We-ell ! ” he said, with an American drawl. “ Maybe
you can ! ” Then he gave a little laugh. “ But you should
have seen all those men rehearsing in that bedroom, throwing
their arms about, and the toreador lying on the bed like
Venus with a fat cigar, listening to her lovers.”

“ I’m glad I didn’t,” said Kate.

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

29

Villiers disappeared with a wicked little laugh.

And as she sat her hands trembled with outrage and pas¬
sion. A-moral! How could one be a-moral, or non-moral,
when one’s soul was revolted 1 How could one be like these
Americans, picking over the garbage of sensations, and gob¬
bling it up like carrion birds. At the moment, both Owen
and Villiers seemed to her like carrion birds, repulsive.

She felt, moreover, that they both hated her first because
she was a woman. It was all right so long as she fell in
with them in every way. But the moment she stood out
against them in the least, they hated her mechanically for
the very fact that she was a woman. They hated her womau-
ness.

And in this Mexico, with its great under-drift of squalor
and heavy reptile-like evil, it was hard for her to bear up.

She was really fond of Owen. But how could she respect
him ? So empty, and waiting for circumstance to fill him
up. Swept with an American despair of having lived in vain,
or of not having really lived. Having missed something.
Which fearful misgiving would make him rush like mechani¬
cal steel filings to a magnet, towards any crowd in the street.
And then all his poetry and philosophy gone with the cigar¬
ette-end he threw away, he would stand craning his neck in
one more frantic effort to sec —just to see. Whatever it was,
he must see it. Or he might miss something. And then,
after he’d seen an old ragged woman run over by a motor¬
car and bleeding on the floor, he’d come back to Kate pale
at the gills, sick, bewildered, daunted, and yet, yes, glad
he’d seen it. It was Life 1

“ Well,” said Kate, “ I always thank God I’m not Argus.
Two eyes are often two too many for me, in all the horrors.
I don’t feed myself on street-accidents.”

At dinner they tried to talk of pleasanter things than bull¬
fights. Villiers was neat and tidy and very nicely mannered,
but she knew he was keeping a little mocking laugh up his
sleeve, because she could not stomach the afternoon’s garb¬
age. He himself had black rings under his eyes, but^that
was because he had “ lived.”

The climax came with the dessert. In walked the Pole
and that Spaniard who spoke American. The Pole was un¬
healthy and unclean-looking. She heard him saying to
uwen, who of course had risen with automatic cordiality :

80

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ We thought we’d come here to dinner. Well, how are
you.”

Kate’s skin was already goose-flesh. But the next instant
she heard that dingy voice, that spoke so many languages
dingily, assailing her with familiarity :

“ Ah, Miss Leslie, you missed the best part of it. You
missed all the fun ! Oh, I say—”

Rage flew into her heart and fire into her eyes. She got
up suddenly from her chair, and faced the fellow behind
her.

“ Thank you ! ” she said. “ I don’t want to hear. I
don’t want you to speak to me. I don’t want to know you.”

She looked at him once, then turned her back, sat down
again, and took a pitahaya from the fruit plate.

The fellow went green, and stood a moment speechless.

“ Oh, all right! ” he said mechanically, turning away to
the Spaniard who spoke American.

“ Well—see you later ! ” said Owen rather hurriedly, and
he went back to his seat at Kate’s table.

The two strange fellows sat at another table. /Kate ate
her cactus fruit in silence, and waited for her coffee. By
this time she was not so angry, she was quite calm. And
even Villiers hid his joy in a new sensation under a manner
of complete quiet composure.

When coffee came she looked at the two men at the other
table, and at the two men at her own table.

“ I’ve had enough of canaille, of any sort,” she said.

“ Oh, I understand, perfectly,” said Owen.

After dinner, she went to her room. And through the
night she could not sleep, but lay listening to the noises of
Mexico City, then to the silence and the strange, grisly fear
that so often creeps out on to the darkness of a Mexican
night. Away inside her, she loathed Mexico City. She even
feared it. In the daytime it had a certain spell—but at
night, the underneath grisliness and evil came forth.

In the morning Owen also announced that he had not slept
at all.

“ Oh, I never slept so well since I was in Mexico,” said
Villiers, with a triumphant look of a bird that has just
pecked a good morsel from the garbage-heap.

“ Look at the frail aesthetic youth ! ” said Owen, in a
follow voice.

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

81

“ His frailty and his aestheticism are both bad signs, to
me,” said Kate ominously.

“ And the youth. Surely that’s another l ” said Owen,
wih a dead laugh.

But Villiers only gave a little snort of cold, pleased amuse¬
ment.

Someone was calling Miss Leslie on the telephone, said
the Mexican chambermaid. It was the only person Kate
knew in the capital—or in the Distrito Federal—a Mrs
Norris, widow of an English embassador of thirty years ago.

She had a big, ponderous old house out in the village of

Tlacolula.

“ Yes ! Yes 1 This is Mrs Norris. How are you ? That’s
right, that’s right. Now, Mrs Leslie, won’t you come out to
tea this afternoon and see the garden? I wish you would.
Two friends are coming in to see me, two Mexicans : Don
Ram6n Carrasco and General Viedma. They are both
charming men, and Don Ramon is a great scholar. 1
assure you, they are both entirely the exception among
Mexicans. Oh, but entirely the exception 1 So now, my
dear Mrs Leslie, won’t you come with your cousin ? I wish
you would.”

Kate remembered the little general; he was a good deal
smaller than herself. She remembered his erect, alert little
figure, something birdlike, and the face with eyes slanting
under arched eyebrows, and the little black tuft of an im¬
perial on the chin : a face with a peculiar Chinese suggestion,
without being Chinese in the least, really. An odd, de-
tached, yet cocky little man, a true little Indian, speaking
UMord English in a rapid, low, musical voice, with extra-

aS? 1 ! 1 ? ge ? tle ^^ation. Yet those black, inhuman eyes !
th ls minute she had not really been able to recall him
o herself, to get any sharp impression. Now she had it.
tte was an Indian pure and simple. And in Mexico, she
Knew, there were more generals than soldiers. There had
neen three generals in the Pullman coming down from El
“° re or , les ’ educated, in the “ drawing-room,”
hSf a rea \P«>sant Indian, travelling with a frizzy

.57 , “ who looked « if she bad fallen into a flour-

he/i- " fa “, was 80 dee P in Powder, and her frizzy hair and

NeitherThic ^ dreSS , s ?, douohed with the white dust of it.
neither this general ” nor thi B woman had ever been in a

32

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Pullman before. But the general was sharper than the
woman. He was a tall wiry fellow with a reddened pock¬
marked face and sharp little black eyes. He followed Owen
to the smoking room, and watched with sharp eyes, to see
how everything was done. And soon he knew. And he
would wipe his wash-bowl dry as neatly as anybody. There
was something of a real man about him. But the poor, half¬
white woman, when she wanted the ladies’ toilet, got lost in
the passage and wailed aloud : I don’t know where to go!
No sc adonde! No se adonde !—until the general sent the
Pullman boy to direct her.

But it had annoyed Kate to see this general and this
woman eating chicken and asparagus and jelly in the Pull¬
man, paying fifteen pesos for a rather poor dinner, when for
a peso-and-a-half apiece they could have eaten a better
meal, and real Mexican, at the meal-stop station. And all
the poor, barefoot people clamouring on the platform, while
the “ general,” who was a man of their own sort, nobly
swallowed his asparagus on the other side of the window-
pane.

But this is how they save the people, in Mexico and else¬
where. Some tough individual scrambles up out of the
squalor and proceeds to save himself. Who pays for the
asparagus and jelly and face-powder, nobody asks, because
everybody knows.

And so much for Mexican generals : as a rule, a class to
be strictly avoided.

Kate was aware of all this. She wasn’t much interested
in any sort of Mexican in office. There is so much in the
world that one wants to avoid, as one wants to avoid the
lice that creep on the unwashed crowd.

Being rather late, Owen and Kate bumped out to Tlaco-
lula in a Ford taxi. It was a long way, a long way through
the peculiar squalid endings of the town, then along the
straight road between trees, into the valley. The sun of
April was brilliant, there were piles of cloud about the sky,
where the volcanoes would be. The valley stretched away to
its sombre, atmospheric hills, in a flat dry bed, parched ex¬
cept where there was some crop being irrigated. The soil
seemed strange, dry, blackish, artificially wetted, and old.
The trees rose high, and hung bare boughs, or withered
shade. The buildings were either new and alien, like the

33

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

Country Club, or cracked and dilapidated, with all the
plaster falling off. The falling of thick plaster from cracked
buildings—one could almost hear it!

Yellow tram-cars rushed at express speed away down the
fenced-in car-lines, rushing round towards Xochimilco or
Tlalpam. The asphalt road ran outside these lines, and on
the asphalt rushed incredibly dilapidated Ford omnibuses,
crowded with blank dark natives in dirty cotton clothes and
big straw hats. At the far edge of the road, on the dust-
tracks under the trees, little donkeys under huge loads
loitered towards the city, driven by men with blackened
faces and bare, blackened legs. Three-fold went the traffic;
the roar of the tram-trains, the clatter of the automobiles,
the straggle of asses and of outside-seeming individuals.

Occasional flowers would splash out in colour from a ruin
of falling plaster. Occasional women with strong, dark-
brown arms would be washing rags in a drain. An occa¬
sional horseman would ride across to the herd of motionless-
black-and-white cattle on the field. Occasional maize fields
were already coming green. And the pillars that mark the
water conduits passed one by one.

They went through the tree-filled plaza of Tlacolula, where
natives were squatting on the ground, selling fruits or
sweets, then down a road between high walls. They pulled
up at last at big gate-doors, beyond which was a heavy
pink-and-yellow house, and beyond the house, i.'igh, dark
cypress trees.

In the road two motor-cars were already standing. That
meant other visitors. Owen knocked on the studded fortress
doors : there was an imbecile barking of dogs. At last a
little footman with a little bla k moustache opened silently.

The square, inner patio, dark, with sun lying on the heavy
arches of one side, had pots of red and white flowers, but
was ponderous, as if dead for centuries. A certain dead,
heavy strength and beauty seemed there, unable to pass
away, unable to liberate itself and decompose. There was
a stone basin of clear but motionless water, and the heavy
reddish-and-yellow arches went round the courtyard with
warrior-like fatality, their bases in dark shadow. Dead,
massive house of the Conquistadores, with a glimpse of tall-
grown garden beyond, and further Aztec cypresses rising
to strange dark heights. And dead silence, like the black,

34

THE PLUMED SERPENT

porous, absorptive lava rock. Save when the tram-cars
battered past outside the solid wall.

Kate went up the jet-like stone staircase, through the
leather doors. Mrs Norris came forward on the terrace of
the upper patio to receive her guests.

“ I’m so glad, my dear, that you came. I should have
rung you up before, but I’ve had such trouble with my
heart. And the doctor wanting to send me down to a lower
altitude ! I said to him, I’ve no patience ! If you’re going
to cure me, cure me at an altitude of seven thousand feet or
else admit your incompetence at once. Ridiculous, this
rushing up and down from one altitude to another. I’ve
lived at this height all these years. I simply refuse to be
bundled down to Cuernavaca or some other place where I
don’t want to go. Well, my dear, and how are you? 99

Mrs Norris was an elderly woman, rather like a conquis¬
tador herself in her black silk dress and her little black
shoulder-shawl of fine cashmere, with a short silk fringe, and
her ornaments of black enamel. Her face had gone slightly
grey, her nose was sharp and dusky, and her voice hammered
almost like metal, a slow, distinct, peculiar hard music of
its own. She was an archaeologist, and she had studied the
Aztec remains so long, that now some of the black-grcy look
of the lava rock, and some of the experience of the Aztec
idols, with sharp nose and slightly prominent eyes and an
expression of tomb-like mockery, had passed into her face.
A lonely daughter of culture, with a strong mind and a dense
will, she had browsed all her life on the hard stones of
archaeological remains, and at the same time she had re¬
tained a strong sense of humanity, and a slightly fantastic
humorous vision of her fellow men.

From the first instant, Kate respected her for her isola¬
tion and her dauntlessness. The world is made up of a mass
of people and a few individuals. Mrs Norris was one of the
few individuals. True, she played her social game all the
time. But she was an odd number; and all alone, she could
give the even numbers a bad time.

“ But come in. Do come in ! 99 she said, after keeping
her two guests out on the terrace that was lined with black
idols and dusty native baskets and shields and arrows and
tapa, like a museum.

In the dark sitting-room that opened on to the terrace

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

85

were visitors : an old man in a black morning coat and white
hair and beard, and a woman in black crcpe-de-chine, with
the inevitable hat of her sort upon her grey hair : a stiff satin
turned up on three sides and with black ospreys underneath.
She had the baby face and the faded blue eyes and the
middle-west accent inevitable.

“ Judge and Mrs Burlap.”

The third visitor was a youngish man, very correct and not
quite sure. He was Major Law, American military attach^
at the moment.

The three people eyed the newcomers with cautious sus¬
picion. They might be shady. There are indeed so many
shady people in Mexico that it is taken for granted, if you
arrive unannounced and unexpected in the capital, that you
are probably under an assumed name, and have some dirty
game up your sleeve.

“ Been long in Mexico? ” snapped the Judge; the police
enquiry had begun.

“ No 1 ” said Owen, resonantly, his gorge rising. “ About
two weeks.”

“ You are an American ? ”

“ said Owen, “ am American. Mrs Leslie is English
—or rather Irish.”

“ Been in the club yet ? ”

“ No,” said Owen, “ I haven’t. American clubs aren’t
much in my line. Though Garfield Spence gave me a letter
of introduction.”

Who ? Garfield Spence ? ” The Judge started as if he
had been stung. “ Why the fellow’s nothing better than a
bolshevist. Why he went to Russia 1 ”

« t * should rather like to go to Russia myself,” said Owen.

It is probably the most interesting country in the world
to-day.”

“ But weren’t you telling me,” put in Mrs Norris, in her

^RhysT” mUSkal V ° iCe ’ " that y ° U lQVed Chhla 80 much ’

“ A d i d T» ke China Very much »” said Owen.

T » And I,m s , ure you made some wonderful collections.
« J? e , now » what 'was your particular fancy? ”

“ said ° wen » “ ^ was jade.”

won^Vfrtii Jade! Jade “ beautiful!

wonderful httle fairy-lands they carve in jade 1 ”

Those

36

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ And the stone itself ! It was the delicate stone that
fascinated me,” said Owen. “ The wonderful quality o,*
it! ”

“ Ah wonderful, wonderful ! Tell me now, dear Mrs
Leslie, what you have been doing since I saw you ? ”

“ We went to a bull-fight, and hated it,” said Kate. “ At
least I did. We sat in the Sun, near the ring, and it was all
horrible.”

“ Horrible, I am sure. I never went to a bull-fight in
Mexico. Only in Spain, where there is wonderful colour.
Did you ever try a bull-fight, Major? ”

“ Yes, I have been several times.”

“ You have ! Then you know all about it. And how are
you liking Mexico, Mrs Leslie ? ”

“ Not much,” said Kate. “ It strikes me as evil.”

“ It does ! It does ! ” said Mrs Norris. “ Ah, if you had
known it before ! Mexico before the revolution ! It was
different then. What is the latest news, Major? ”

“ About the same,” said the Major. “ There is a rumour
that the new President will be turned down by the army, a
few days before he comes into office. But you never know.”

“ I think it would be a great shame not to let him have a
try,” put in Owen hotly. “ He seems a sincere man, and
just because he is honestly a Labour man, they want to
shut him out.”

“ Ah, my dear Mr Rhys, they all talk so nobly before¬
hand. If only their deeds followed their words, Mexico would
be heaven on earth.”

“ Instead of hell on earth,” snapped the Judge.

A young man and his wife, also Americans, were intro¬
duced as Mr and Mrs Henry. The young man was fresh
and lively.

“ We were talking about the new President,” said Mrs
Norris.

“ Well, why not! ” said Mr Henry breezily. “ Pm just
back from Orizaba. And do you know what they’ve got
pasted up on the walls?— Ilosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!
Viva el Jesus Cristo de Mexico , Socrates Tomas Montes! ”

“ Why, did you ever hear of such a thing ! ” said Mrs
Norris.

“ Hosanna! nosanna! Ilosanna! To the new Labour
President! I think it’s rich,” said Henry.

87

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLTJLA

The Judge stamped his stick on the ground in a speechless

^They pasted on my luggage,” said the Major, “ when I
came through Vera Cruz : La degenerada media cl as a, Serd
regenerada, por mi, Montes. The degenerate middle class

shall be regenerated by me, Montes.”

“ Poor Montes ! ” said Kate. “ He seems to have got his

work cut out.” . t _ t _* D v

“ He has indeed ! ” said Mrs Norris. « Poor man, I wish

he might come in peacefully and put a strong bond on the

country. But there’s not much hope, I’m afraid.”

There was a silence, during which Kate felt that bitter

hopelessness that comes over people who know Mexico well.

A bitter barren hopelessness.

“ How can a man who comes in on a Labour vote, even «v
doctored one, put a strong hand on a country ! ” snapped
the Judge. “ Why he came in on the very cry of Down with
the strong hand! ” And again the old mac stamped his
stick in an access of extreme irritability.

This was another characteristic of the old residents of the

city : A state of intense, though often suppressed irritation,
an irritation amounting almost to rabies.

“ Oh, but mayn’t it be possible that he will change his
views a little on coming into power? ” said Mrs Norris.
“ So many Presidents have done so.”

“ I should say very probable, if ever he gets into power,”
said young Henry. “ He’ll have all his work cut out saving
Socrates Tomas, he won’t have much time left for saving

Mexico.”

“ He’s a dangerous fellow, and will turn out a scoundrel,”
said the Judge.

“ Myself,” said Owen, “ as far as I have followed him, I
believe he is sincere, and I admire him.”

“ I thought it was so nice,” said Kate, “ that they re¬
ceived him in New York with loud music by the Street
Sweepers’ Band. The Street Sweepers’ Band they sent to
receive him from the ship 1 ”

“ You see,” said the Major, “ no doubt the Labour people
themselves wished to send that particular band.”

** But to be President Elect, and to be received by the

Street Sweeners’ Band! ” said Kate. “ No. I can’t believe
ltl”

88

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Oh, it actually was so,” said the Major. “ But that is
Labour hailing Labour, surely.”

“ The latest rumour,” said Henry, “ is that the army will
go over en bloc to General Angulo about the twenty-third,
a week before the inauguration.”

“ But how is it possible ? ” said Kate, “ when Montes
is so popular? ”

“ Montes popular ! ” they all cried at once. “ Why ! ”
snapped the Judge, “ he’s the most unpopular man in
Mexico.”

“ Not with the Labour Party 1 ” said Owen, almost at
bay.

** The Labour Party ! ” the Judge fairly spat like a cat.
“ There is no such thing. What is the Labour Party in
Mexico ? A bunch of isolated factory hands here and there,
mostly in the State of Vera Cruz. The Labour Party!
They’ve done what they could already. We know them.”

“ That’s true,” said Henry. “ The Labourites have tried
every little game possible.' When I was in Orizaba they
marched to the Hotel Francia to shoot all the gringoes and
the Gachupines. The hotel manager had pluck enough to
harangue them, and they went off to the next hotel. When
the man came out there to talk to them, they shot him be¬
fore he got a word out. It’s funny, really 1 If you have to
go to the Town Hall, and you’re dressed in decent clothes,
they let you sit on a hard bench for hours. But if a street-
sweeper comes in, or a fellow in dirty cotton drawers, it is
Buenos Dias l Sciior! Base UstedI Quiere Usted algo ?—
while you sit there waiting their pleasure. Oh, it’s quite
funny.”

The Judge trembled with irritation like an access of gout.
The party sat in gloomy silence, that sense of doom and
despair overcoming them as it seems to overcome all people
who talk seriously about Mexico. Even Owen was silent.
He too had come through Vera Cruz, and had had his fright;
the porters had charged him twenty pesos to carry his trunk
from the ship to the train. Twenty pesos is ten dollars, for
ten minutes* work. And when Owen had seen the man in
front of him arrested and actually sent to jail, a Mexican
jail at that, for refusing to pay the charge, “ the leg?; 1 ,
charge,” he himself had stumped up without a word.

“ I walked into the National Museum the other day,” said

80

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

the Mi»jor quietly. “ Just into that room on the patio
•where the stones are. It was rather a cold morning, with a
Norte blowing. I’d been there about ten minutes when
somebody suddenly poked me on the shoulder. I turned
round, and it was a lout in tight boots. You spik English?

I said yes! Then he motioned me to take my hat off : I’d
got to take my hat off. What for? said I, and I turned away
and went on looking at their idols and things : ugliest set
of stuff in the world, I believe. Then up came the fellow
with the attendant—the attendant of course wearing his cap.
They began gabbling that this was the National Museum,
and I must take off my hat to their national monuments.
Imagine it: those dirty stones 1 I laughed at them and
jammed my hat on tighter and walked out. They arc
really only monkeys, when it comes to nationalism.”

“ Exactly ! ” cried Henry. “ When they forget all about
the Patria and Mexico and all that stuff, they’re as nice a
people as you’d find. But as soon as they get national,
they’re just monkeys. A man up from Mixcoatl told me a
nice story. Mixcoatl is a capital way in the South, and
they’ve got a sort of Labour bureau there. Well, the
Indians come in from the hills, as wild as rabbits. And they
get them into that bureau, and the Laboristas, the agitator
fellows, say to them : Now Sehores, have you anything to
report from your native village? Haven't you anything for
which you wotild like redress? Then of course the Indians
start complaining about one another, and the Secretary
says: Wait a minute , gentlemen! Let me ring up the
Governor and report this. So he goes to the telephone and
starts ringing: ringing: Ah! Is that the Palace? Is the
Governor in? Tell him Sehor Fulano wants to speak to
him l The Indians sit gaping with open mouths. To them
it’s a miracle. Ah! Is that you, Governor! Good morning!
How are you! Can I have your attention for a moment?
Many thanksl Well I've got some gentlemen here down
from Apaxtle , in the hills: Josi Garcia, Jesus Querido, etc.
—and they xvish to report so-and-so. Yes! Yes! That's it!
Yes! What? You will see that justice is done and the
thing is made right? Ah sehor , many thanks! In the name
of these gentlemen from the hills, from the village of Apaxtle,
many thanks.

There sit the Indians staring as if heaven had opened and

40

THE PLUMED SERPENT

the Virgin of Guadalupe was standing tiptoe on their chins.
And what do you expect? The telephone is a dummy. It
isn’t connected with anywhere. Isn’t that rich ? But it’s
Mexico.”

The moment’s fatal pause followed this funny story.

“ Oh but! ” said Kate, “ it’s wicked ! It is wicked.
I’m sure the Indians would be all right, if they were left
alone.”

“ Well,” said Mrs Norris. “ Mexico isn’t like any other
place in the world.”

But she spoke with fear and despair in her voice.

“ They seem to want to betray everything,” said Kate.
“ They seem to love criminals and ghastly things. They
seem to want the ugly things. They seem to want the ugly
things to come up to the top. All the foulness that lies at
the bottom, they want to stir up to the top. They seem to
enjoy it. To enjoy making everything fouler. Isn’t it
curious ! ”

“ It is curious,” said Mrs Norris.

“ But that’s what it is,” said the Judge. “ They want
to turn the country into one big crime. They don’t like
anything else. They don’t like honesty and decency and
cleanliness. They want to foster lies and crime. What they
call liberty here is just freedom to commit crime. That’s
what Labour means, that’s what they all mean. Free crime,
nothing else.”

“ I wonder all the foreigners don’t go away,” said Kate.

“ They have their occupations here,” snapped the Judge.

“ And the good people are all going away. They have
nearly all gone, those that have anything left to go to,” said
Mrs Norris. “ Some of us, who have our property here, and
who have made our lives here, and who know the country,
we stay out of a kind of tenacity. But we know it’s hope¬
less. The more it changes, the worse it is.—Ah, here is Don
Ramon and Don Cipriano. So pleased to see you. Let me
introduce you.”

Don Ramon Carrasco was a tall, big, handsome man who
gave the effect of bigness. He was middle aged, with a
large black moustache and large, rather haughty eyes under
straight brows. The General was in civilian clothes, looking
very small beside the other man, and very smartly built,
almost cocky.

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

41

“ Come,” said Mrs Norris. “ Let us go across and have
tea.”

The Major excused himself, and took his departure.

Mrs Norris gathered her little shawl round her shoulders
and led through a sombre antechamber to a little terrace,
where creepers and flowers bloomed thick on the low walls.
There was a bell-flower, red and velvety, like blood that is
drying : and clusters of white roses : and tufts of bougain¬
villea, papery magenta colour.

“ How lovely it is here ! ” said Kate. “ Having the great
dark trees beyond.”

But she stood in a kind of dread.

“ Yes it is beautiful,” said Mrs Norris, with the gratifi¬
cation of a possessor. “ I have such a time trying to keep
these apart.” And going across in her little black shawl,
she pushed the bougainvillea away from the rust-scarlet bell¬
flowers, stroking the little white roses to make them inter¬
vene.

“ I think the two reds together interesting,” said Owen.

“ Do you really ! ” said Mrs Norris, automatically, paying
no heed to such a remark.

The sky was blue overhead, but on the lower horizon was
a thick, pearl haze. The clouds had gone.

“ One never sees Popocatepetl nor Ixtaccihuatl,” said
Kate, disappointed.

“ No, not at this season. But lock, through the trees
there, you see Ajusco ! ”

Kate looked at the sombre-seeming mountain, between
the huge dark trees.

On the low stone parapet were Aztec things, obsidian
knives, grimacing squatting idols in black lava, and a queer
tmckish stone stick, or baton. Owen was balancing the
* tr* * ^ mur derous even to touch.

Kate turned to the general, who was near her, his face
expressionless, yet alert.

" Aztec things oppress me,” she said.

cnhiir^ y T? 0re r °PP^ ssive >” he answered, in his beautiful
cultured English, that was nevertheless a tiny bit like a
parrot talking.

" There is no hope in them,” she said.

Perhaps the Aztecs never asked for hoDe.” he said
somewhat automatically. P ' & ’

42

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Surely it is hope that keeps one going ? ” she said.

“ You, maybe. But not the Aztec, nor the Indian to¬
day.”

He spoke like a man who has something in reserve, who
is only half attending to what he hears, and even to his own
answer.

“What do they have, if they don’t have hope? ” she
said.

“ They have some other strength, perhaps,” he said
evasively.

“ I would like to give them hope,” she said. “ If they
had hope, they wouldn’t be so sad, and they would be
cleaner, and not have vermin.”

“ That of course would be good,” he said, with a little
smile. “ But I think they are not so very sad. They laugh
a good deal and are gay.”

“ No,” she said. “ They oppress me, like a weight on my
heart. They make me irritable, and I want to go away.”

“ From Mexico ? ”

“ Yes. I feel I want to go away from it and never, never
see it again. It is so oppressive and gruesome.”

“ Try it a little longer,” he said. “ Perhaps you will feel
differently. But perhaps not,” he ended vaguely, drift-
ingly.

She could feel in him a sort of yearning towards her. As
if a sort of appeal came to her from him, from his physical
heart in his breast. As if the very heart gave out dark rays
of seeking and yearning. She glimpsed this now for the
first time, quite apart from the talking, and it made her shy.

“And does everything in Mexico oppress you?” he
added, almost shyly, but with a touch of mockery, looking
at her with a troubled naive face that had its age heavy and
resistant beneath the surface.

“ Almost everything! ” she said. “ It always makes my
heart sink. Like the eyes of the men in the big hats—I call
them the peons. Their eyes have no middle to them. Those
big handsome men, under their big hats, they aren’t really
there. They have no centre, no real 1. Their middle is a
raging black hole, like the middle of a maelstrom.”

She looked with her troubled grey eyes into the black,
slanting, watchful, calculating eyes of the small man oppo¬
site her. He had a pained expression, puzzled, like a child.

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

43

And at the same time something obstinate and mature, a
demonish maturity, opposing her in an animal way.

“ You mean we aren’t real people, we have nothing of our
own, except killing and death,” he said, quite matter of fact.

“ I don’t know,” she said, startled by his interpretation.
“ I only say how it makes me feel.”

“ You are very clever, Mrs Leslie,” came Don Ramon’s
quiet, but heavy teasing voice behind her. “ It is quite
true. Whenever a Mexican cries Viva ! he ends up with
Muera! When he says Viva! he really means Death /or
Somebody or Other! I think of all the Mexican revolutions,
and I see a skeleton walking ahead of a great number of
people, waving a black banner with Viva la Muerte! written
in large white letters. Long live Death! Not Viva Cristo
Hey! but Viva Muerte Rey! Vamos! Viva! ”

Kate looked round. Don Ram6n was flashing his knowing
brown Spanish eyes, and a little sardonic smile lurked under
his moustache. Instantly Kate and he, Europeans in
essence, understood one another. He was waving his arm
to the last Viva!

“ But,” said Kate, “ I don’t want to say Viva la
Muerte! ”

“ But when you are real Mexican—” he said, teasing.

“ I never could be,** she said hotly, and he laughed.

“ I’m afraid Vtua la Muerte / hits the nail on the head,”
said Mrs Norris, rather stonily. “ But won’t you come to
tea ! Do ! ”

She led the way in her black little shawl and neat grey
hair, going ahead like a Conquistador herself, and turning
to look with her Aztec eyes through her pince-nez, to see if
the others were coming.

“ We are following,” said Don Ram6n in Spanish, teasing
her. Stately in his black suit, he walked behind her on the
narrow terrace, and Kate followed, with the small, strutting
on Cipriano, also in a black suit, lingering oddly near her.

Do I call you General or Don Cipriano? ” she asked,
Mirnmg to him.

di<W^-i d 1 ■““kqwckly lit his face, though his eyes
did not smile. They looked at her with a black, sharp lc4.

of he Said * “ You kn ™ Gener al is a term

of disgrace in Mexico. Shall we say Don Cipriano ? ”

Yes, I like that much the best,” she said.

44

THE PLUMED SERPENT

And he seemed pleased.

It was a round tea-table, with shiny silver tea-service,
and silver kettle with a little flame, and pink and white
oleanders. The little neat young footman carried the tea¬
cups, in white cotton gloves. Mrs Norris poured tea and cut
cakes with a heavy hand.

Don Ramon sat on her right hand, the Judge on her left.
Kate was between the Judge and Mr Henry. Everybody
except Don Ramon and the Judge was a little nervous. Mrs
Norris always put her visitors uncomfortably at their ease, as
if they were captives and she the chieftainess who had cap¬
tured them. She rather enjoyed it, heavily, archaeologi-
cally queening at the head of the table. But it was evident
that Don Ramon, by far the most impressive person present,
liked her. Cipriano, on the other hand, remained mute and
disciplined, perfectly familiar with the tea-table routine,
superficially quite at ease, but underneath remote and un¬
connected. He glanced from time to time at Kate.

She was a beautiful woman, in her own unconventional
way, and with a certain richness. She was going to be forty
next week. Used to all kinds of society, she watched people
as one reads the pages of a novel, with a certain disinter¬
ested amusement. She was never in any society : too Irish,
too wise.

“ But of course nobody lives without hope,” Mrs Norris
was saying banteringly to Don Ramon. “ If it’s only the
hope of a real, to buy a litre of pulque.”

“ Ah, Mrs Norris ! ” he replied in his quiet, yet curiously
deep voice, like a violincello : “ If pulque is the highest

happiness ! ”

“ Then we are fortunate, because a toston will buy para¬
dise,” she said.

“ It is a bon mot, Seriora mia,” said Don Ram6n, laugh¬
ing and drinking his tea.

“ Now won’t you try these little native cokes with sesame
seeds on them ! ” said Mrs Norris to the table at large.
“ My cook makes them, and her national feeling is flattered
when anybody likes them. Mrs Leslie, do take one.”

“ I will,” said Kate. “ Does one say Open Sesame l ”

“ If one wishes,” said Mrs Norris.

“ Won’t you have one? ” said Kate, handing the plate to
Judge Burlap.

45

TEA-PARTY in tlacolula

“ Don’t want any,” he snapped, turning his lace away as
if he had been offered a plate of Mexicans, and leaving Kate

with the dish suspended.

Mrs Norris quickly but definitely took the plate, saying .

“ Judge Burlap is afraid of Sesame Seed, he prefers h
cave shut.” And she handed the dish quietly to Cipnano,
who was watching the old man’s bad manners with black,

snake-like eyes. a • fV .,,

“ Did you see that article by Willis Rice Hope, in the

Excelsiori ” suddenly snarled the Judge, to his hostess.

“ I did. I thought it very sensible.”

“ The only sensible thing that’s been said about these
Agrarian Laws. Sensible 1 I should think so. Why Rice
Hope came to me, and I put him up to a few things. Rut
his article says everything, doesn’t miss an item of import¬

ance.”

« Quite ! ” said Mrs Norris, with rather stony attention.

“ If only saying would alter things, Judge Burlap.”

“ Saying the wrong thing has lone all the mischief 1 ’
snapped the Judge. “ Fellows like Garfield Spence coming
down here and talking a lot of criminal talk. Why the town’s
full of Socialists and Sinverguenzas from New York.”

Mrs Norris adjusted her pince-nez.

“ Fortunately,” she said, “ they don’t come out to Tlaco¬
lula, so we needn’t think about them. Mrs Henry, let me
give you some more tea.”

“ Do you read Spanish ? ” the Judge spat out, at Owen.
Owen, in his big shell spectacles, was evidently a red rag to
his irritable fellow-countryman.

“ No 1 ” said Owen, round as a cannon-shot.

Mrs Norris once more adjusted her eye-glasses.

“ It’s such a relief to hear someone who is altogether in¬
nocent of Spanish, and altogether unashamed,” she said.
“ My father had us all speaking four languages by the time
we were twelve, and we have none of us ever quite recovered.
My stockings were all dyed blue for me before I put my hair
up. By the way ! How have you been for walking, Judge ?
You heard of the time I had with my ankle ? ”

“ Of course we heard ! ” cried Mrs Burlap, seeing diy land
at last. “ I’ve been trying so hard to get out to see you,
to ask about it. We were so grieved about it.”

“ What happened? ” said Kate.

46

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Why I foolishly slipped on a piece of orange peel in
town—just at the corner of San Juan de Latran and Madero.
And I fell right down. And of course, the first thing I did
when I got up was to push the piece of orange peel into the
gutter. And would you believe it, that lot of Mex—” she
caught herself up—“ that lot of fellows standing there at the
corner laughed heartily at me, when they saw me doing it.
They thought it an excellent joke.’*

“ Of course they would,” said the Judge. “ They were
waiting for the next person to come along and fall.”

“ Did nobody help you? ” asked Kate.

“ Oh no ! If anyone has an accident in this country, you
must never, never help. If you touch them even, you may
be arrested for causing the accident.”

“ That’s the law ! ” said the Judge. “ If you touch them
before the police arrive, you are arrested for complicity. Let
them lie and bleed, is the motto.”

“ Is that true? ” said Kate to Don Ram6n.

“ Fairly true,” he replied. “ Yes, it is true you must not
touch the one who is hurt.”

“ How disgusting ! ” said Kate.

“ Disgusting 1 ” cried the Judge. “ A great deal is dis¬
gusting in this country, as you’ll learn if you stay here long.
I nearly lost my life on a banana skin; lay in a darkened
room for days, between life and death, and lame for life from
it.”

“ How awful 1 ” said Kate. “ What did you do when
you fell ? ”

“ What did I do ? Just smashed my hip.”

It had truly been a terrible accident, and the man bad
suffered bitterly.

“ You can hardly blame Mexico for a banana skin,” said
Owen, elated. “ I fell on one in Lexington Avenue; but
fortunately I only bruised myself on a soft spot.”

“ That wasn’t your head, was it? ” said Mrs Henry.

“ No,” laughed Owen. “ The other extreme.”

“ We’ve got to add banana skins to the list of public
menaces,” said young Henry. “ I’m an American, and I
may any day turn bolshevist, to save my pesos, so I can
repeat what I heard a man saying yesterday. He said there
are only two great diseases in the world to-day—Bolshevism
and Americanism; and Americanism is the worst of the

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

47

two, because Bolshevism only smashes your house or your
business or your skull, but Americanism smashes your soul.

“ who was he? ” snarled the Judge.

“ I forget,” said Henry, wickedly. .

« One wonders,’’ said Mrs Norris slowly, “ what he meant

by <‘ A He didn’t define it,” said Henry. “ Cult of the dollar,

1 “WeU,” said Mrs Norris. “ The cult of the dollar in my
experience, is far more intense in the countries that haven

got the dollar, than in the United States.

Kate felt that the table was like a steel disc to which
they were all, as victims, magnetised and bound.

“ Where is your garden, Mrs Norris ? ” she asked.

They trooped out, gasping with relief, to the terrace. The
Judge hobbled behind, and Kate had to linger sympatheti¬
cally to keep him company.

They were on the little terrace.

“ Isn’t this strange stuff ! ” said Kate, picking up one of
the Aztec stone knives on the parapet. “ Is it a sort of

jade?” ,, ,

“ Jade 1 ” snarled the Judge. “ Jade’s green, not black.

That’s obsidian.”

“ Jade can be black,” said Kate. “ I’ve got a lovely
little black tortoise of jade from China.”

“ You can’t have. Jade’s bright green.”

“ But there’s white jade too. I know there is.”

The Judge was silent from exasperation for a few mo¬
ments, then he snapped :

“ Jade’s bright green.”

Owen, who had the ears of a lynx, had heard.

“ What’s that ? ” he said.

“ Surely there’s more than green jade ! ” said Kate.

“ What l ” cried Owen. “ More ! Why there’s every
imaginable tint—white, rose, lavender—”

“ And black ? ” said Kate.

“ Black? Oh yes, quite common. Why you should sec
my collection. The most beautiful range of colour! Only
green jadel Ha-ha-ha! ”—and he laughed a rather stage
laugh.

They had come to the stairs, which were old stone, waxed
and polished in some way till they were a glittering black.

48

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ I’ll catch hold of your arm down here,” said the Judge
to young Henry. “ This stair-case is a death-trap.”

Mrs Norris heard without comment. She only tilted her
pince-nez on her sharp nose.

In the archway downstairs, Don Ramon and the General
took their leave. The rest trailed on into the garden.

Evening was falling. The garden was drawn up tall,
under the huge dark trees on the one side, and the tall,
reddish-and-yellow house on the other. It was like being at
the bottom of some dusky, flowering garden down in Hades.
Hibiscus hung scarlet from the bushes, putting out yellow
bristling tongues. Some roses were scattering scentless
petals on the twilight, and lonely-looking carnations hung
on weak stalks. From a huge dense bush the mysterious
white bells of the dattura were suspended, large and silent,
like the very ghosts of sound. And the dattura scent was
moving thick and noiseless from the tree, into the little
alleys.

Mrs Burlap had hitched herself on to Kate, and from her
silly, social baby-face was emitting searching questions.

“ What hotel are you staying at? ”

Kate told her.

“ I don’t know it. Where is it? ”

“ In the Avenida del Peru. You wouldn’t know it, it is
a little Italian hotel.”

“ Are you staying long? ”

“ We aren’t certain.”

“ Is Mr Rhys on a newspaper? ”

" No, he’s a poet.”

“ Does he make a living by poetry? ”

“ No, he doesn’t try to.”

It was the sort of secret service investigation one is sub¬
mitted to, in the capital of shady people, particularly shady
foreigners.

Mrs Norris was lingering by a flowering arch of little white
flowers.

Already a firefly was sparking. It was already night.

“ Well, goodbye, Mrs Norris ! Won’t you come and lunch
with us. I don’t mean come out to our house. Only let me
know, and lunch with me anywhere you like , in town.”

“ Thank you my dear! Thank you so much ! Well 1 I’ll
see I ”

49

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

Mrs Norris was almost regal, stonily, Aztec-regal.

At last they had all made their adieus, and the great doors

were shut behind them. .

“ How did you come out 1 ” Mrs Burlap asked, nnperti-

De « In an old Ford taxi—but where is it? ” said Kate,
peering into the dark. It should have been under the jresna
trees opposite, but it wasn’t.

« What a curious thing ! ” said Owen, and he disappeared
into the night.

“ Which way do you go? ” said Mrs Burlap.

“ To the Zocalo,” said Kate.

“ We have to take a tram, the opposite way,” said the
baby-faced, withered woman from the Middle-West.

The Judge was hobbling along the pavement like a cat on
hot bricks, to the corner. Across the road stood a group
of natives in big hats and white calico clothes, all a little the
worse for the pulque they had drunk. Nearer, on this side
of the road, stood another little gang, of workmen in town
clothes.

“ There you have them,” said the Judge, flourishing his
stick with utter vindictiveness. “ There’s the two lots of
’em.”

“ What two lots? ” said Kate, surprised.

“ Those peon fellows and those obreros, all drunk, the lot
of them. The lot of them ! ” And in a spasm of pure,
frustrated hate, he turned his back on her.

At the same time they saw the lights of a tram-car rushing
dragon-like up the dark road, between the high wall and the
huge trees.

“ Here’s our car 1 ” said the Judge, beginning to scramble
excitedly with his stick. %

“ You go the other way,” flung the baby-faced, faded
woman in the three-cornered satin hat, also beginning to
fluster as if she were going to swim off the pavement.

The couple clambered avidly into the brightly-lighted car,
first class; hobbling up. The natives crowded into the
second class.

Away whizzed the tren . The Burlap couple had not even
8aid goodnight! They were terrified lest they might have to
raiow somebody whom they might not want to know; whom
it might not pay to know.

50

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ You common-place little woman ! ” said Kate aloud,
looking after the retreating tram-car. “ You awful ill-bred
little pair.”

She was a bit afraid of the natives, not quite sober, who
were waiting for the car in the opposite direction. But
stronger than her fear was a certain sympathy with these
dark-faced silent men in their big straw hats and naive little
cotton blouses. Anyhow they had blood in their veins :
they were columns of dark blood.

Whereas the other bloodless, acidulous couple from the
Middle-West, with their nasty whiteness ... 1

She thought of the little tale the natives tell. When the
Lord was making the first men, he made them of clay and
put them into the oven to bake. They came out black.
They’re baked too much! said the Lord. So he made
another batch, and put them in. They came out white.
They’re baked too little! He said. So He had a third try.
These came out a good warm brown. They’re just right J
said the Lord.

The couple from the Middle-West, that withered baby-
face and that limping Judge, they weren’t baked. They
were hardly baked at all.

Kate looked at the dark faces under the arc-lamp. They
frightened her. They were a sort of menace to her. But
she felt they were at least baked hot and to a certain satis¬
factory colour.

The taxi came lurching up, with Owen poking his head
out and opening the door.

“ I found the man in a pulqueria,” he said. “ But I
don’t think he’s quite drunk. Will you risk driving back
with him ? ”

“ The pulqueria was called La Flor de un Dia —the Flower
of a Day,” said Owen, with an apprehensive laugh.

Kate hesitated, looking at her man.

“ We may as well,” she said.

Away gallivanted the Ford, full speed to Hell.

“ Do tell him not so fast,” said Kate.

“ I don’t know how, said Owen.

He shouted in good English :

“ Hey ! chauffeur ! Not so fast 1 Don’t drive so fast.”

“No presto. Troppo presto. Va troppo presto ! ” said
Ttnte.

TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA

51

The man looked at them with black, dilated eyes of
fathomless incomprehension. Then he put his foot on the
accelerator.

“ He’s only going faster ! ” laughed Owen nervously.

“ Ah ! Let him alone 1 said Kate, with utter weariness.

The fellow drove like a devil incarnate, as if he had the
devil in his body. But also, he drove with the devil’s own
nonchalant skill. There was nothing to do but let him rip.

“ Wasn’t that a ghastly tea party 1 ” said Owen.

“ Ghastly ! ” said Kate.

CHAP : in. FORTIETH BIRTHDAY.

Kate woke up one morning, aged forty. She did not hide
the fact from herself, but she kept it dark from the others.

It was a blow, really. To be forty 1 One had to cross
a dividing line. On this side there was youth and spontan¬
eity and “ happiness.” On the other side something differ¬
ent : reserve, responsibility, a certain standing back from
“ fun.”

She was a widow, and a lonely woman now. Having
married young, her two children were grown up. The boy
was twenty-one, and her daughter nineteen. They stayed
chiefly with their father, from whom she had been divorced
ten years before, in order to marry James Joachim Leslie.
Now Leslie was dead, and all that half of life was over.

She climbed up to the flat roofs of the hotel. It was a
brilliant morning, and for once, under the blue sky of the
distance, Popocatepetl stood aloof, a heavy giant presence
under heaven, with a cape of snow. And rolling a long
dark roll of smoke like a serpent.

Ixtaccihuatl, the White Woman, glittered and seemed
near, but the other mountain, Popocatepetl, stood further
back, and in shadow, a pure cone of atmospheric shadow,
with glinting flashes of snow. There they were, the two
monsters, watching gigantically and terribly over their lofty,
bloody cradle of men, the Valley of Mexico. Alien, ponder¬
ous, the white-hung mountains seemed to emit a deep pur¬
ring sound, too deep for the ear to hear, and yet audible on
the blood, a sound of dread. There was no soaring or uplift
or exaltation, as there is in the snowy mountains of Europe.
Rather a ponderous white-shouldered weight, pressing
terribly on the earth, and murmuring like two watchful

lions. ... , ,

Superficially, Mexico might be all right : with its suburbs

of villas, its central fine streets, its thousands of motor-cars,
its tennis and its bridge-parties. The sun shone brilliantly
every day, and big bright flowers stood out from the trees.
It was a holiday.

Until you were alone with it. And then the undertone was
like the low angry, snarling purring of some jaguar spotted

53

fortieth birthday

with night. There was a ponderous, down-pressing weight
upon the spirit : the great folds of the dragon of the Aztecs,
the dragon of the Toltecs winding around one and weighing
down the soul. And on the bright sunshine was a dark
steam of an angry, impotent blood, and the flowers seemed
to have their roots in spilt blood. The spirit of place was

cruel, down-dragging, destructive. .

Kate could so well understand the Mexican who had said
to her : El Grito mexicano es siempre el Grito del Odio —The
Mexicano shout is always a shout of hate. The famous revo¬
lutions, as Don Ramon said, began with Viva! but ended
always with Muera! Death to this, death to the other, it was
all death ! death ! death ! as insistent as the Aztec sacri¬
fices. Something for ever gruesome and macabre.

Why had she come to this high plateau of death ? As a
woman, she suffered even more than men suffer : and in the
end, practically all men go under. Once, Mexico had had an
elaborate ritual of death. Now it has death ragged, squalid,
vulgar, without even the passion of its own mystery.

She sat on a parapet of the old roof. The street beyond
was like a black abyss, but around her was the rough glare
of uneven flat roofs, with loose telephone wires trailing
across, and the sudden, deep, dark wells of the patios, show¬
ing flowers blooming in shade.

Just behind was a huge old church, its barrel roof hump¬
ing up like some crouching animal, and its domes, like
bubbles inflated, glittering with yellow tiles, and blue and
white tiles, against the intense blue heaven. Quiet native
women in long skirts were moving on the roofs, hanging out
washing or spreading it on the stones. Chickens perched
here and there. An occasional bird soared huge overhead,
trailing a shadow. And not far away stood the brownish
tower-stumps of the Cathedral, the profound old bell trem¬
bling huge and deep, so soft as to be almost inaudible, upon
the air.

It ought to have been all gay, allegro, allegretto, in that
sparkle of bright air and old roof surfaces. But no ! There
was the dark undertone, the black, serpent-like fatality all
the time.

It was no good Kate’s wondering why she had come.
Over in England, in Ireland, in Europe, she had heard the
coiMummatum est of her own spirit. It was finished, in a

54

THE PLUMED SERPENT

kind of death agony. But still this heavy continent of dark-
souled death was more than she could bear.

She was forty : the first half of her life was over. The
bright page with its flowers and its love and its stations of the
Cross ended with a grave. Now she must turn over, and
the page was black, black and empty.

The first half of her life had been written on the bright,
smooth vellum of hope, with initial letters all gorgeous upon
a field of gold. But the glamour had gone from station to
station of the Cross, and the last illumination was the tomb.

Now the bright page was turned, and the dark page lay
before her. How could one write on a page so profoundly
black ?

She went down, having promised to go and see the fres¬
coes in the university and schools. Owen and Villiers and
a young Mexican were waiting for her. They set off through
the busy streets of the town, where automobiles and the
little omnibuses called camions run wild, and where the
natives in white cotton clothes and sandals and big hats
linger like heavy ghosts in the street, among the bour¬
geoisie, the young ladies in pale pink crepe de chine and
high heels, the men in little shoes and American straw hats.
A continual bustle in the glitter of sunshine.

Crossing the great shadeless plaza in front of the Cathedral,
where the tram-cars gather as in a corral, and slide away
down their various streets, Kate lingered again to look at
the things spread for sale on the pavement : the little toys,
the painted gourd-shells, brilliant in a kind of lacquer, the
novcdades from Germany, the fruits, the flowers. And the
natives squatting with their wares, large-limbed, silent,
handsome men looking up with their black, centreless eyes,
speaking so softly, and lifting with small sensitive brown
hands the little toys they had so carefully made and painted.
A strange gentle appeal and wistfulness, strange male voices,
so deep, yet so quiet and gentle. Or the women, the small
quick women in their blue rebozos, looking up quickly with
dark eyes, and speaking in their quick, coaxing voices. The
man just setting out his oranges, wiping them with a cloth
so carefully, almost tenderly, and piling them in bright tiny
pyramids, all neat and exquisite. A certain sensitive tender¬
ness of the heavy blood, a certain chirping charm of the
bird-like women, so still and tender with a bud-like femi-

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

55

ninity. And at the same time, the dirty clothes, and the
unwashed skin, the lice, and the peculiar hollow glint of the
black eyes, at once so fearsome and so appealing.

Kate knew the Italian fruit vendors, vigorously polishing
their oranges on their coat-sleeves. Such a contrast, the big,
handsome Indian, sitting so soft and as it were lonely by the
kerb, softly, lingeringly polishing his yellow oranges to a
clean gleam, and lingeringly, delicately arranging the little
piles, the pyramids for two or three cents each.

Queer work, for a big, handsome, male-looking man. But
they seem to prefer these childish jobs.

The University was a Spanish building that had been done
up spick and span, and given over to the young artists to
decorate. Since the revolutions, nowhere had authority and
tradition been so finally overthrown as in the Mexican fields
of science and art. Science and art are the sport of the
young. Go ahead, my boys !

The boys had gone ahead. But even then, the one artist
of distinction was no longer a boy, and he had served a long
apprenticeship in Europe.

Kate had seen the reproductions of some of Riberas’ fres¬
coes. Now she went round the patios of the University,
looking at the originals. They were interesting : the man
knew his craft.

But the impulse was the impulse of the artist’s hate. In
the many frescoes of the Indians, there was sympathy with
the Indian, but always from the ideal, social point of view.
Never the spontaneous answer of the blood. These flat
Indians were symbols in the great script of modern socialism,
they were figures of the pathos of the victims of modern
industry and capitalism. That was all they were used for :
symbols in the weary script of socialism and anarchy.

Kate thought of the man polishing his oranges half-an-
hour before : his peculiar beauty, a certain richness of
physical being, a ponderous power of blood within him, and
a helplessness, a profound unbelief that was fatal and
demonish. And all the liberty, all the progress, all the
socialism in the world would not help him . Nav, it would
only help further to destroy him.

On the corridors of the University, young misses in bobbed
,nair and boys’ jumpers were going around, their chins pushed
forward with the characteristic, deliberate youth-and-eager-

56

THE PLUMED SERPENT

ness of our day. Very much aware of their own youth and
eagerness. And very American. Young professors were
passing in soft amiability, young and apparently harmless.

The artists were at work on the frescoes, and Kate and
Owen were introduced to them. But they were men—or
boys—whose very pigments seemed to exist only to tpater
le bourgeois. And Kate was weary of epatisme, just as
much as of the bourgeoisie. She wasn’t interested in
epatant le bourgeois. The epateurs were as boring as the
bourgeois, two halves of one dreariness.

The little party passed on to the old Jesuit convent, now
used as a secondary school. Here were more frescoes.

But they were by another man. And they were cari¬
catures so crude and so ugly that Kate was merely repelled.
They were meant to be shocking, but perhaps the very
deliberateness prevents them from being so shocking as
they might be. But they were ugly and vulgar. Strident
caricatures of the Capitalist and the Church, and of the Rich
Woman, and of Mammon painted life-size and as violently
as possible, round the patios of the grey old building, where
the young people are educated. To anyone with the spark
of human balance, the things are a misdemeanour.

“ Oh, but how wonderful ! ” cried Owen.

His susceptibilities were shocked, therefore, as at the bull¬
fight, he was rather pleased. He thought it was novel and
stimulating to decorate your public buildings in this
way.

The young Mexican who was accompanying the party was
a professor in the University too : a rather short, soft young
fellow of twenty-seven or eight, who wrote the inevitable
poetry of sentiment, had been in the Government, even as
a member of the House of Deputies, and was longing to go to
New York. There was something fresh and soft, petulant
about him. Kate liked him. He could laugh with real hot
young amusement, and he was no fool.

Until it came to these maniacal ideas of socialism, politics,
and La Patria. Then he was as mechanical as a mousetrap.

Very tedious. '

“ Oh no ! ” said Kate in front of the caricatures. They

are too ugly. They defeat their own ends.”

“ But they are meant to be ugly,” said young^ Garcia.
“ They must be ugly, no ? Because capitalism is ugly, and

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

57

Mammon is ugly, and the priest holding his hand to get the
money from the poor Indians is ugly. No? ” He laughed
rather unpleasantly.

“ But,” said Kate, “ these caricatures are too intentional.
They are like vulgar abuse, not art at all.”

“ Isn’t that true? ” said Garcia, pointing to a hideous
picture of a fat female in a tight short dress, with hips and
breasts as protuberances, walking over the faces of the
poor.

“ That is how they are, no? ”

** Who is like that? ” said Kate. “ It bores me. One
must keep a certain balance.”

“ Not in Mexico ! ” said the young Mexican brightly, his
plump cheeks flushing. “ In Mexico you can’t keep a
balance, because things are so bad. In other countries, yes,
perhaps you can remain balanced, because things are not
so bad as they are here. But here they are so very bad, you
can’t be human. You have to be Mexican. You have to be
more Mexican than human, no? You can’t do no other.
You have to hate the capitalist, you have to, in Mexico, or
nobody can live. We can’t live. Nobody can live. If you
are Mexican you can’t be human, it is impossible. You have
to be a socialist Mexican, or you have to be a capitalist
Mexican, and you hate. What else is there to be done ?
We hate the capitalist because he ruins the country and the
people. We must hate him.”

‘‘ But after all,” said Kate, “ what about the twelve
million poor—mostly Indians—whom Montes talks about?
You can’t make them all rich. Whatever you do. And they
don’t understand the very words, capital and socialism.
They are Mexico, really, and nobody ever looks at them,
except to make a casus belli of them. Humanly, they never
exist for you.”

“ Humanly they can’t exist, they are too ignorant! ”
then ^, arcia ‘ " But when we can kiI1 a11 the capitalists,

i a W someb °dy killing you ,” said Kate. “ No,

don t like it. You aren’t Mexico. You aren’t even Mexi-
can, really. You are just half Spaniards full of European

r s ’ y° u care f °r asserting your own ideas and nothing

eise. Yo„ have no real bowels of compassion. You are
no good.”

58

THE PLUMED SERPENT

The young man listened with round eyes, going rather
yellow in the face. At the end he lifted his shoulders and
spread his hands in a pseudo-Mediterranean gesture.

“ Well ! It may be ! ” he said, with a certain jeering
flippancy. “ Perhaps you know everything. Maybe!
Foreigners, they usually know everything about Mexico.”
And he ended on a little cackling laugh.

“ I know what I /eel,” said Kate. “ And now I want a
taxi, and I want to go home. I don’t want to see any more
stupid, ugly pictures.”

Off she drove back to the hotel, once more in a towering
rage. She was amazed at herself. Usually she was so good-
tempered and easy. But something about this country irri¬
tated her and put her into such a violent anger, she felt she
would die. Burning, furious rage.

And perhaps, she thought to herself, the white and half¬
white Mexicans suffered some peculiar reaction in their blood
which made them that they too were almost always in a
state of suppressed irritation and anger, for which they must
find a vent. They must spend their lives in a complicated
game of frustration, frustration of life in its ebbing and
flowing.

Perhaps something came out of the earth, the dragon of
the earth, some effluence, some vibration which militated
against the very composition of the blood and nerves in
human beings. Perhaps it came from the volcanoes. Or
perhaps even from the silent, serpent^like dark resistance of
those masses of ponderous natives whose blood was princi¬
pally the old, heavy, resistant Indian blood.

Who knows? But something there was, and something
very potent. Kate lay on her bed and brooded her own
organic rage. There was nothing to be done ?

But young Garcia was really nice. He called in the after¬
noon and sent up his card. Kate, feeling sore, received him

unwillingly. .

“ I came,” he said, with a little stiff dignity, like an

ambassador on a mission, “ to tell you that I, too, don^t
like those caricatures. I, too, don’t like them. I don t
like the young people, boys and girls, no ? to be seeing
them all the time. I, too, don’t like. But I think, also,
that here in Mexico, we can’t help it. People are very bad,
very greedy, no ?—they only want to get money here, and

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

59

they don’t care. So we must hate them. Yes, we must.
But I, too, I don’t like it.”

He held his hat in his two hands, and twisted his shoulders
in a conflict of feelings.

Kate suddenly laughed, and he laughed too, with a certain
pain and confusion in his laughter.

“ That’s awfully nice of you to come and say so,” she
said, warming to him.

“ No, not nice,” he said, frowning. “ But I don’t know
what to do. Perhaps you think I am—different—I am not
the thing that I am. And I don’t want it.”

He flushed and was uncomfortable. There was a curious
naive sincerity about him, since he was being sincere. If
he had chosen to play a game of sophistication, he could
have played it better. But with Kate he wanted to be sin¬
cere.

“ I know, really,” laughed Kate, “ you feel a good deal
like I do about it. I know you only pretend to be fierce
and hard.”

“ No! ” he said, suddenly making solemn, flashing eyes.
“ I do also feel fierce. I do hate these men who take, only
take everything from Mexico—money, and all— every¬
thing! ” he spread his hands with finality. “ I hate them
because I must, no? But also, I am sorry—I am sorry 1
have to hate so much. Yes, I think I am sorry. I think so.”

He knitted his brows rather tense. And over his plump,
young, fresh face was a frown of resentment and hatred,
quite sincere too.

Kate could see he wasn’t really sorry. Only the two
moods, of natural, soft, sensuous flow, and of heavy resent¬
ment and hate, alternated inside him like shadow and shine
on a cloudy day, in swift, unavoidable succession. What
was nice about him was his simplicity, in spite of the compli¬
cation of his feelings, and the fact that his resentments were
not personal, but beyond persons, even beyond himself.

She went out with him to tea, and while she was out, Don
Rara6n called and left cards with the corners turned down,
and an invitation to dinner for her and Owen. There
seemed an almost old-fashioned correctness in those cards.

Looking over the newspaper, she came on an odd little
Jtem. She could read Spanish without much difficulty. The
trouble lay in talking it, when Italian got in her way and

60

THE PLUMED SERPENT

caused a continual stumble. She looked on the English page
of the Excelsior or the Universal for the news—if there was
any. Then she looked through the Spanish pages for bits
of interest.

This little item was among the Spanish information, and
was headed : The Gods of Antiquity Return to Mexico.

“ There was a ferment in the village of Sayula, Jalisco,
on the Lake of Sayula, owing to an incident of more or less
comic nature, yesterday morning towards mid-day. The
women who inhabit the shores of the lake are to be seen
each day soon after sunrise descending to the water’s edge
with large bundles. They kneel on the rocks and stones,
and in little groups, like water-fowl, they wash their dirty
linen in the soft water of the lake, pausing at times as an
old canoa sails by with large single sail. The scene is little
changed since the days of Montezuma, when the natives of
the lake worshipped the spirit of the waters, and threw in
little images and idols of baked clay, which the lake some¬
times returns to the descendants of the dead idolaters, to
keep them in mind of practices not yet altogether forgotten.

As the hot sun rises in the sky, the women spread their
washing on the sand and pebbles of the shore, and retire to
the shade of the willow trees that grow so gracefully and
retain their verdant hue through the dryest season of the
year. While thus reposing after their labours, these humble
and superstitious women were astonished to see a man of
great stature rise naked from the lake and wade towards the
shore. His face, they said, was dark and bearded, but his
body shone like gold.

As if unaware of any watchful eyes, he advanced calmly
and majestically towards the shore. There he stood a
moment, and selecting with his eye a pair of the loose cotton
pants worn by the peasants in the fields, that was spread
whitening in the sun, he stooped and proceeded to cover his
nakedness with the said garment.

The woman who thus saw her husband’s apparel robbed
beneath her eye, rose, calling to the man and summoning
the other women. Whereupon the stranger turned his dark
face upon them, and said in a quiet voice : ‘ Why are you
crying? Be quiet 1 It will be given back to you. Your
gods are ready to return to you. Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc,
the old gods, are minded to come back to you. Be quiet,

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

61

don’t let them find you crying and complaining. I have
come from out of the lake to tell you the gods are coming
back to Mexico, they are ready to return to their own
home.’

Little comforted by this speech, the woman who had lost
her washing was overcome and said no more. The stranger
then appropriated a cotton blouse, which he donned, and
disappeared.

After a while, the simple women gathered courage to re¬
turn to their humble dwellings. The story thus reached the
ears of the police, who at once set out to search for the
thief.

The story, however, is not yet concluded. The husband
of the poor woman of the lake-shore, returning from his
labours in the field, approached the gates of the village to¬
wards sunset, thinking, no doubt, of nothing but repose and
the evening meal. A man in a black serape stepped towards
him, from the shadows of a broken wall, and asked : Are
you afraid to come with me ? The labourer, a man of spirit,
promptly replied; No senor ! He therefore followed the un¬
known man through the broken wall and through the bushes
of a deserted garden. In a dark room, or cellar, a small
light was burning, revealing a great basin of gold, into
which four little men, smaller than children, were pouring
sweet-scented water. The astounded peasant was now told
to wash and put on clean clothes, to be ready for the return
of the gods. He was seated in the golden basin and washed
with sweet-smelling soap, while the dwarfs poured water
over him. This, they said, is the bath of Quetzalcoat}.
The bath of fire is yet to come. They gave him clean cloth¬
ing of pure white cotton, and a new hat with star em¬
broidery, and sandals with straps of white leather. But
beside this, a new blanket, white with bars of blue and
black, and flowers like stars at the centre, and two pieces
of silver money. Go, he was told. And when they ask you ,
where did you get your blanket? ansxver that Quetzalcoatl
young again. The poor fellow went home in sore fear,
lest the police should arrest him for possessing stolen goods.

The village is full of excitement, and Don Ram6n Carrasco,
our eminent historian and archaeologist, whose hacienda lies
in the vicinity, has announced his intention of proceeding as
soon as possible to the spot to examine tHe origin of this new

02

THE PLUMED SERPENT

legend. Meanwhile, the police are watching attentively the
development of affairs, without taking any steps for the
moment. Indeed, these little fantasies create a pleasant
diversion in the regular order of banditry, murder, and
outrage, which it is usually our duty to report.”

Kate wondered what was at the back of this : if anything
more than a story. Yet, strangely, a different light than the
common light seemed to gleam out of the words of even this

newspaper paragraph.

She wanted to go to Sayula. She wanted to see the big
lake where the gods had once lived, and whence they were
due to emerge. Amid all the bitterness that Mexico pro¬
duced in her spirit, there was still a strange beam of wonder
and mystery, almost like hope. A strange darkly-mdescent
beam of wonder, of magic.

The name Quetzalcoatl, too, fascinated her. She had read
bits about the god. Quetzal is the name of a bird that lives
high up in the mists of tropical mountains, and has very
beautiful tail-feathers, precious to the Aztecs. Coatl is a
serpent. Quetzalcoatl is the Plumed Serpent, so hideous in
the fanged, feathered, writhing stone of the National Mus-

eU But Quetzalcoatl was, she vaguely remembered, a sort of
fair-faced bearded god; the wind, the breath of life, the eyes
that see and are unseen, like the stars by day. The eyes that
watch behind the wind, as the stars beyond the blue of day.
And Quetzalcoatl must depart from Mexico to merge again
into the deep bath of life. He was old. He had gone east¬
wards, perhaps into the sea, perhaps he had sailed mto
heaven, like a meteor returning, from the top of the Volcano
of Orizaba : gone back as a peacock streaming into the night,
or as a bird of Paradise, its tail gleaming like the wake of
a meteor. Quetzalcoatl ! Who knows what he meant to the
dead Aztecs, and to the older Indians, who knew him before
the Aztecs raised their deity to heights of horror and vindic¬
tiveness ? , , . n .

All a confusion of contradictory gle ms of meaning, Quet¬
zalcoatl. But why not? Her Irish spirit was weary to
death of definite meanings, and a God of one fixed purport.
Gods should be iridescent, like the rainbow in the storm.
Man creates a God in his own image, and the gods grow old
along with the men that made them. But storms sway m

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

68

heaven, nd the god-stuff sways high and angry over our
heads. Gods die with men who have conceived them. But
the god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a
sound to be heard. Like the sea in storm, that beats against
the rocks of living, stiffened men, slowly to destroy them.
Or like the sea of the glimmering, ethereal plasm of the
world, that bathes the feet and the knees of men as earth-
sap bathes the roots of trees. Ye must be born again.
Even the gods must be born again. We must be born again.

In her vague, woman’s way, Kate knew this. She had
lived her life. She had had her lovers., her two husbands. .
She had her children.

Joachim Leslie, her dead husband, she had loved as much
as a woman can love a man : that is, to the bounds of human
love. Then she had realised that human love has its limits,
that there is a beyond. And Joachim dead, willy nilly her
spirit had passed the bounds. She was no longer in love with
love. She no longer yearned for the love of a man, or the
love even of her children. Joachim had gone into eternity
in death, and she had crossed with him into a certain eter¬
nity in life. There, the yearning for companionship and
sympathy and human love had left her. Something infinite¬
ly intangible but infinitely blessed took its place : a peace
that passes understanding.

At the same time, a wild and angry battle raged between
her and the thing that Owen called life : such as the bull¬
fight, the tea-party, the enjoyments; like the arts in their
modern aspect of hate effusion. The powerful, degenerate

thmg called life, wrapping one or other of its tentacles round
her.

fk A ^ d fl then, .^ hen she could esca P e into her true loneliness,
the mflux of peace and soft, flower-like potency which was
eyond understanding. It disappeared even if you thought
about it, so delicate, so fine. And yet, the only reality.

of m A m * U u born ag * in - ° ut of the fi g ht with the octopus
onp mi f drag ° n of degenerate or of incomplete existence,

a to^h St ™ thlS S ° ft bl °° m ° f being ’ that “ damaged by

J?°’A e „ n .° w^ted love, excitement, and some

in?da^jf of her Sh t was fort y. an <i in the rare, linger-

AboveTll ^ m 1 y ’ the flower of her soul was opening,
e all things, she must preserve herself from wordly

64

THE PLUMED SERPENT

contacts. Only she wanted the silence of other unfolded
souls around her, like a perfume. The presence of that which
is forever unsaid.

And in the horror and climax of death-rattles, which is
Mexico, she thought she could see it in the black eyes of the
Indians. She felt that Don Ram6n and Don Cipriano both
had heard the soundless call, across all the hideous choking.

Perhaps this had brought her to Mexico : away from
England and her mother, away from her children, away from
everybody. To be alone with the unfolding flower of her
own soul, in the delicate, chiming silence that is at the
midst of things.

The thing called “ Life ” is just a mistake we have made
in our own minds. Why persist in the mistake any further?

Owen was the mistake itself : so was Villiers : so was that

Mexico City.

.She wanted to get out, to disentangle herself again.

They had promised to go out to dinner to the house of Don
Ram6n. His wife was away in the United States with her
two boys, one of whom had been ill, not seriously, at his
school in California. But Don Rambn’s aunt would be
hostess.

The house was out at Tlalpam. It was May, the weather
was hot, the rains were not yet started. The shower at thf
bull-fight had been a sort of accident.

u I wonder,” said Owen, “ whether I ought to put on a
dinner-coat. Really, I feel humiliated to the earth every
time I put on evening dress.”

“ Then don’t do it! ” said Kate, who was impatient of
Owen’s kicking at these very little social pricks, and swallow¬
ing the whole porcupine.

She herself came down in a simple gown with a black
velvet top and a loose skirt of delicate brocaded chiffon, of
a glimmering green and yellow and black. She also wore a
long string of jade and crystal.

It was a gift she had, of looking like an Ossianic goddess,
a certain feminine strength and softness glowing in the very
material of her dress. But she was never “ smart.”

“ Why you’re dressed up to the eyes ! 99 cried Owen in
chagrin, pulling at his soft collar. “ Bare shoulders notwith¬
standing ! ”

They went out to the distant suburb in the tram-car,

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

65

swift in the night, with big clear stars overhead, dropping
and hanging with a certain gleam of menace. In Tlalpam
there was a heavy scent of nightflowers, a feeling of ponder¬
ous darkness, with a few sparks of intermittent fireflies.
And always the heavy calling of nightflower scents. To
Kate, there seemed a faint whiff of blood in all tropical-
scented flowers : of blood or sweat.

It was a hot night. They banged on the iron doors of the
entrance, dogs barked, and a mozo opened to them, warily,
closing fast again the moment they had entered the dark
garden of trees.

Don Ramon was in white, a white dinner-jacket : Don
Cipriano the same. But there were other guests, young
Garcia, another pale young man called Mirabal, and an
elderly man in a black cravat, named Toussaint. The only
other woman was Dona Isabel, aunt to Don Ramon. She

wore a black dress with a high collar of black lace, and some
strings of pearls, and seemed shy, frightened, absent as a
nun before all these men. But to Kate she was very kind,
carressive, speaking English in a plaintive faded voice. This
dinner was a sort of ordeal and ritual combined, to the
cloistered, elderly soul.

But it was soon evident that she was trembling with fear-
ful joy. She adored Ram6n with an uncritical, nun-like
adoration. It was obvious she hardly heard the things that
were said. Words skimmed the surface of her consciousness
without ever penetrating. Underneath, she was trembling
in nun-like awareness of so many men, and in almost sacred
excitement at facing Don Ram6n as hostess.

The house was a fairly large villa, quietly and simply
furnished, with natural taste.

MXT ^° y° u always live here? ” said Kate to Don Ram6n.

Never at your hacienda? ”

« ? ow do y° u know I have a hacienda ? ” he asked.

(t I Saw it in a newspaper—near Sayula.”

Ah ! ” he said, laughing at her with his eyes. “ You
saw about the returning of the Gods of Antiquity.”

« t fL*”, she said * “ Don, t y°u think it is interesting? ”

w ] thl "k so,” he said. b

« rll ove the word Quetzalcoatl.”

The word! ” he repeated.

tus eyes laughed at her teasingly all the time.

c

66

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ What do you think, Mrs Leslie,” cried the pale-faced
young Mirabel, in curiously resonant English, with a French
accent. “ Don’t you think it would be wonderful if the
gods came back to Mexico ? our own gods ? ” He sat in
intense expectation, his blue eyes fixed on Kate’s face, his
soup-spoon suspended.

Kate’s face was baffled with incomprehension.

“ Not those Aztec horrors ! ” she said.

“ The Aztec horrors ! The Aztec horrors ! Well, perhaps
they were not so horrible after all. But if they were, it was
because the Aztecs were all tied up. They were in a cul de
sac, so they saw nothing but death. Don’t you think so ?

“ I don’t know enough ! ” said Kate.

“ Nobody knows any more. But if you like the word
Quetzalcoatl, don’t you think it would be wonderful if he
came back again ? Ah, the names of the gods ! Don t you
think the names are like seeds, so full of magic, of the unex¬
plored magic? Huitzilopochtli!—how wonderful! And
Tlaloc ! Ah ! I love them ! I say them over and over, like
they say Mani padma Om! in Thibet. I believe in the ferti¬
lity of sound. Itzpapalotl —the Obsidian Butterfly ! Itzpa-
palotl! But say it, and you will see it does good to your
soul. Itzpapalotl ! Tezcatlipoca ! They were old when the
Spaniards came, they needed the bath of life again. But
now, re-bathed in youth, how wonderful they must be .
Think of Jehovah! Jehovah! Think of Jesus Christ. How
thin and poor they sound ! Or Jesus Cnsto! They are dead
names, all the life withered out of them. Ah, it is time now
for Jesus to go back to the place of the death of the gods,
and take the long bath of being made young agam. He is
an old-old young god, don’t you think ? He looked long

at Kate, then dived for his soup.

Kate widened her eyes in amazement at this torrent from

the young Mirabal. Then she laughed.

<t i think it’s a bit overwhelming ! she said, non-com-
• • • 1

ml “ Ah ! Yes ! Exactly ! Exactly ! But how good to be over¬
whelmed ! How splendid if something will overwhelm me !

Ah. I am so glad! ” , _ .

The last word came with a clapping French resonance,

and the young man dived for his soup again. He was lean

a^id pale, but burning with an intense, crazy energy.

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

67

“ You see,’* said young Garcia, raising his full, bright dark
eyes to Kate, half aggressive and half-bashful : “ we must
do something for Mexico. If we don’t, it will go under, no ?
You say you don’t like socialism. I don’t think I do either.
But if there is nothing else but socialism, we will have social¬
ism. If there is nothing better. But perhaps there is.”

“Why should Mexico go under? ” said Kate. “ There
are lots of children everywhere.”

“ Yes. But the last census of Porfirio Diaz gave seven¬
teen million people in Mexico, and the census of last year
gave only thirteen millions. Maybe the count was not quite
right. But you count four million people fewer, in twenty
years, then in sixty years there will be no Mexicans : only
foreigners, who don’t die.”

“ Oh, but figures always lie 1 ” said Kate. “ Statistics
are always misleading.”

“ Maybe two and two don’t make four,” said Garcia. “ 1
don’t know if they do. But I know, if you take two away
from two, it leaves none.”

“ Do you think Mexico might die out? ” she said to Don
Ram6n.

“ Why ! ” he replied. “ It might. Die out and become
Americanised.”

“ I quite see the danger of Americanisation,” said Owen.
“ That would be ghastly. Almost better die out.”

Owen was so American, he invariably said these things.

“ But! ” said Kate. “ The Mexicans look so strong ! ”

“ They are strong to carry heavy loads,” said Don
Ram6n. “ But they die easily. They eat all the wrong
things, they drink the wrong things, and they don’t mind
dying. They have many children, and they like their chil¬
dren very much. But when the child dies, the parents say :
Ah, he will be an angelito! So they cheer up and feel as
u they had been given a present. Sometimes I think they
enjoy it when their children die. Sometimes I think they
would like to transfer Mexico en bloc into Paradise, or what¬
ever lies behind the walls of death. It would be better
there! ”

There was a silence.

“But how sad you are ! ” said Kate, afraid.

^t Isabel Was S ivin 8 hurried orders to the manservant.

Whoever knows Mexico below the surface, is sad 1 ”

68

THE PLUMED SERPENT

said Julio Toussaint, rather sententiously, over his blank
cravat.

“ Well,” said Owen, “ it seems to me, on the contrary, a
gay country. A country of gay, irresponsible children. Or
rather, they would, be gay, if they were properly treated.
If they had comfortable homes, and a sense of real freedom.
If they felt that they could control their lives and their own
country. But being in the grip of outsiders, as they have
been for hundreds of years, life of course seems hardly worth
while to them. Naturally, they don’t care if they live or
die. They don’t feel free.”

“ Free for what? ” asked Toussaint.

“ To make Mexico their own. Not to be so poor and at
the mercy of outsiders.”

“ They are at the mercy of something worse than out¬
siders,” said Toussaint. “ Let me tell you. They are at the
mercy of their own natures. It is this way. Fifty per cent,
of the people in Mexico are pure Indian : more or less. Of
the rest, a small proportion are foreigners or Spaniard. You
have then the mass which is on top, of mixed blood, Indian
and Spaniard mixed, chiefly. These are the Mexicans,
those with the mixed blood. Now, you take us at this
table. Don Cipriano is pure Indian. Don Ram6n is almost
pure Spaniard, but most probably he has the blood of
Tlaxcalan Indians in his veins as well. Senor Mirabel is
mixed French and Spanish. Senor Garcia most probably
has a mixture of Indian blood with Spanish. I myself, have
French, Spanish, Austrian and Indian blood. Very well !
Now you mix blood of the same race, and it may be all
right. Europeans are all Aryan stock, the race is the same.
But when you mix European and American Indian, you mix
different blood races, and you produce the half-breed. Now,
the half-breed is a calamity. For why? He is neither one
thing nor another, he is divided against himself. His blood
of one race tells him one thing, his blood of another race tells
him another. He is an unfortunate, a calamity to himself.
And it is hopeless.

« And this is Mexico. The Mexicans of mixed blood are
hopeless. Well then ! There are only two things to be done.
All the foreigners and the Mexicans clear out and leave the
country to the Indians, the pure-blooded Indians. But
already you have a difficulty. How can you distinguish the

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

69

pure-blooded Indian, after so many generations ? Or else the
half-breed or mixed-blood Mexicans who are all the time on
top shall continue to destroy the country till the Americans
from the United States flood in. We are as California and
New Mexico now are, swamped under the dead white
sea.

“ But let me tell you something further. I hope we are not
Puritans. I hope I may say that it depends on the moment
of coition. At the moment of coition, either the spirit of the
father fuses with the spirit of the mother, to create a new:
being with a soul, or else nothing fuses but the germ of
procreation.

“ Now consider. How have these Mexicans of mixed blood
been begotten, for centuries? In what spirit? What was
the moment of coition like ? Answer me that, and you have
told me the reason for this Mexico which makes us despair
and which will go on making everybody despair, till it de¬
stroys itself. In what spirit have the Spanish and other
foreign fathers gotten children of the Indian women ? What
sort of spirit was it? What sort of coition? And then,
what sort of race do you expect ? ”

“ But what sort of a spirit is there between white men
and white women ! ” said Kate.

“ At least,” replied the didactic Toussaint, “ the blood is
homogenous, so that consciousness automatically unrolls in
continuity.”

“ I hate its unrolling in automatic continuity,” said Kate.

“ Perhaps ! But it makes life possible. Without develop¬
ing continuity in consciousness, you have chaos. And this
comes of mixed blood.”

And then,” said Kate, “ surely the Indian men are
fond of their women I The men seem manly, and the women
seem very lovable and womanly.”

j ^* s P? ssi hle that the Indian children are pure-blooded,
and there is the continuity of blood. But the Indian con¬
sciousness is swamped under the stagnant water of the white
man s Dead Sea consciousness. Take a man like Benito
Juarez, a pure Indian. He floods his old consciousness with

v«!i? eW Whlte , ldeas » and th ere springs up a whole forest of
verbiage, new laws, new constitutions and all the rest. But

1 “ * sud l en Tf ed ; Xt etOWS like a we€d on the surface,

P the strength of the Indian soil underneath, and helps

70

THE PLUMED SERPENT

the process of ruin. No, madam I There is no hope for
Mexico short of a miracle.”

“ Ah ! ” cried Mirabal, flourishing his wine glass. “ Isn’t
that wonderful, when only the miracle will save us ! When
we must produce the miracle? We! We! We must make
the miracle ! ” He hit his own breast emphatically. “ Ah,
I think that is marvellous 1 ” And he returned to his turkey
in black sauce.

“ Look at the Mexicans ! ” Toussaint flared on. “ They
don’t care about anything. They eat food so hot with chili,
it burns holes in their insides. And it has no nourishment.
They live in houses that a dog would be ashamed of, and
they lie and shiver with cold. But they don't do anything.
They could make, easily, easily, a bed of maize leaves or
similar leaves. But they don’t do it. They don’t do any¬
thing. They roll up in a thin sarape and lie on a thin mat
on the bare ground, whether it is wet or dry. And Mexican
nights are cold. But they lie down like dogs, anyhow, as if
they lay down to die. I say dogs 1 But you will see the
dogs looking for a dry sheltered place. The Mexicans, no !
Anywhere, nothing, nothing ! And it is terrible. It is terrible !
As if they wanted to punish themselves for being alive 1 ”

“ But then, why do they have so many children ? ” said
Kate.

“ Why do they? The same, because they don’t care.
They don’t care. They don’t care about money, they don’t
care about making anything, they don’t care about nothing,
nothing, nothing. Only they get an excitement out of
women, as they do out of chili. They like to feel the red
pepper burning holes in their insides, and they like to feel
the other thing, the sex, burning holes in them too. But
after the moment, they don’t care. They don’t care a bit.

“And that is bad. I tell you, excuse me, but all, every¬
thing, depends on the moment of coition. At that moment
many things can come to a crisis : all a man’s hope, his
honour, his faith, his trust, his belief in life and creation and
God, all these things can come to a crisis in the moment of
coition. And these things will be handed on in continuity
to the child. Believe me, I am a crank on this idea, but it
is true. It is certainly absolutely true.”

“ I believe it is true,” said Kate, rather coldly.

“ Ah ! you do ! Well then ! Look at Mexico ! The only

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

71

corwciotw people are half-breeds, people of mixed blood, be¬
gotten in greed and selfish brutality.”

“ Some people believe in the mixed blood,” said Kate.

“ Ah ! They do, do they ? Who ? ”

“ Some of your serious-minded men. Tiny say the half-
breed is better than the Indian.”

“ Better ! Well! The Indian has hid hopelessness. The
moment of coition is his moment of supreme hopelessness,
when he throws himself down the pit of despair.”

The Austrian, European blood, which fans into fire of
conscious understanding, died down again, leaving what was
Mexican in Julio Toussaint sunk in irredeemable gloom.

“ It is true,” said Mirabal, out of the gloom. “ The
Mexicans who have any feeling always prostitute themselves,
one way or another, and so they can never do anything.
And the Indians can never do anything either, because they
haven’t got hope in anything. But it is always darkest be¬
fore the dawn. We must make the miracle come. The
miracle is superior even to the moment of coition.”

It seemed, however, as if he said it by an effort of will.

The dinner was ending in silence. During the whirl of
talk, or of passionate declaration, the servants had carried
round the food and wine. Dona Isabel, completely oblivi¬
ous of the things that were being said, watched and directed
the servants with nervous anxiety and excitement, her hands
with their old jewellery trembling with agitation. Don
Ram6n had kept his eye on his guests* material comfort, at
the same time listening, as it were, from the back of his
head. His big brown eyes were inscrutable, his face im¬
passive. But when he had anything to say, it was always
with a light laugh and a teasing accent. And yet his eyes

brooded and smouldered with an incomprehensible, unyield¬
ing fire. J

Kate felt she was in the presence of men. Here were men
face to face not with death and self-sacrifice, but with the
life-issue. She felt for the first time in her life, a pang
almost like fear, of men who were passing beyond what she
knew, beyond her depth.

Cipriano, his rather short but intensely black, curved eye-

snmS OWe ! in ?- OVer his dark e y es > watched his plate, only
sometimes looking up with a black, brilliant glance, either

at whomsoever was speaking, or at Don Ram6n, or at Kate.

72

THE PLUMED SERPENT

His face was changeless and intensely serious, serious almost
with a touch of childishness But the curious blackness of his
eyelashes lifted so strangely, with such intense unconscious
maleness from his eyes, the movement of his hand was so
odd, quick, light as he ate, so easily a movement of shooting,
or of flashing a knife into the body of some adversary, and
his dark-coloured lips were so helplessly savage, as he ate or
briefly spoke, that her heart stood still. There was some¬
thing undeveloped and intense in him, the intensity and the
crudity of the semi-savage. She could well understand the
potency of the snake upon the Aztec and Maya imagination.
Something smooth, undeveloped, yet vital in this man sug¬
gested the heavy-ebbing blood of reptiles in his veins. That
was what it was, the heavy-ebbing blood of powerful rep¬
tiles, the dragon of Mexico.

So that unconsciously she shrank when his black, big,
glittering eyes turned on her for a moment. They were not,
like Don Ramdn’s, dark eyes. They were black, as black as
jewels into which one could not look without a sensation of
fear. And her fascination was tinged with fear. She felt
somewhat as the bird feels when the snake is watching it.

She wondered almost that Don Ramon was not afraid.
Because she had noticed that usually, when an Indian looked
to a white man, both men stood back from actual contact,
from actual meeting of each other’s eyes. They left a wide
space of neutral territory between them. But Cipriano
looked at Ram6n with a curious intimacy, glittering, steady,
warrior-like, and at the same time betraying an almost mena¬
cing trust in the other man.

Kate realised that Ram6n had a good deal to stand up to.
But he kept a little, foiling laugh on his face, and lowered
his beautiful head with the black hair touched with grey,
as if he would put a veil before his countenance.

“ Do you think one can make this miracle come ? ” she

asked of him.

“ The miracle is always there,” he said, “ for the man
who can pass his hand through to it, to take it.”

They finished dinner, and went to sit out on the verandah,
looking into the garden where the light from the house fell
uncannily on the blossoming trees and the dark tufts of
Yucca and the strange great writhing trunks of the Laurel
de India.

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

78

Cipriano had sat down next to her, smoking a cigarette.

« It is a strange darkness, the Mexican darkness !” she said.

“ Do you like it? ” he asked.

“ I don’t know yet,” she said. 44 Do you? ”

“ Yes. Very much. I think I like best the time when
the day is falling and the night coming on like something
else. Then, one feels more free, don’t you think ? Like the
flowers that send out their scent at night, but in the day¬
time they look at the sun and don’t have any smell.”

“ Perhaps the night here scares me,” she laughed.

44 Yes. But why not? The smell of the flowers at night
may make one feel afraid, but it is a good fear. One likes
it, don’t you think ? ”

44 I am afraid of fear,” she said.

He laughed shortly.

44 You speak such English English,” she said. “ Nearly
all the Mexicans who speak English speak American English.
Even Don Ram6n does, rather.”

44 Yes. Don Ram6n graduated in Columbia University.
But I was sent to England, to school in London, and then
to Oxford.”

“ Who sent you ? 99

“ My god-father. He was an Englishman : Bishop
Severn, Bishop of Oaxaca. You have heard of him ? ”

“ No,” said Kate.

44 He was a very well-known man. He died only about
ten years ago. He was very rich, too, before the revolution.
He had a big hacienda in Oaxaca, with a very fine library.
But they took it away from him in the revolution, and they
sold the things, or broke them. They didn’t know the value
of them, of course.”

And did he adopt you ? 99

^ e f l * n a ™*y. My father was one of the overseers on
the hacienda. When I was a little boy I came running to my
father, when the Bishop was there, with something in mv
hands so! —and he made a cup of his hand. “ I don’t
remember. This is what they tell me. I was a small child
three or four years of age—somewhere there. What I had

^U°ol\Tno^> U ° W SC ° rp,0D> ° ne ° f the “ mal1

« Kate Z creature^ *'“ der ’ d “ k Ws > “

c*

74

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Well, the Bishop was talking to my father, and he saw
what I had got before my father did. So he told me at once,
to put the scorpion in his hat—the Bishop’s hat, no? Of
course I did what he told me, and I put the scorpion in his
hat, and it did not bite me. If it had stung me I should
have died, of course. But I didn’t know, so I suppose the
alacran was not interested. The Bishop was a very good
man, very kind. He liked my father, so he became my
god-father. Then he always took an interest in me, and he
sent me to school, and then to England. He hoped I should
be a priest. He always said that the one hope for Mexico
was if she had really fine native priests.” He ended rather
wistfully.

“ And didn’t you want to become a priest? ” said Kate.

“ No ! ” he said sadly. “ No ! ”

“ Not at all ? ” she asked.

« No 1 When I was in England it was different from
Mexico. Even God was different, and the Blessed Mary.
They were changed so much, I felt I didn’t know them any
more. Then I came to understand better, and when I under¬
stood I didn’t believe any more. I used to think it was the
images of Jesus, and the Virgin, and the Saints, that were
doing everything in the world. And the world seemed to me
so strange, no? I couldn’t see that it was bad, because it
was all so very strange and mysterious, when I was a child,
in Mexico. Only in England I learned about the laws of
life, and some science. And then when I knew why the sun
rose and set, and how the world really was, I felt quite
different.”

“ Was your god-father disappointed ? ”

“ A little, perhaps. But he asked me if I would rather
be a soldier, so I said I would. Then when the revolution
came, and I was twenty-two years old, I had to come back
to Mexico.”

t( Did you like your god-father? ”

** Yes, very much. But the revolution carried everything
away. I felt I must do what my god-father wished. But
I could see that Mexico was not the Mexico he believed in.
It was different. He was too English, and too good to
understand. In the revolutions, I tried to help the man I
believed was the best man. So you see, I have always been
half a priest and half a soldier.”

FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

75

“ You never married ? ”

“ No. I couldn’t marry, because I always felt my god¬
father was there, and I felt I had promised him to be a
priest—all those things, you know. When he died he told
me to follow my own conscience, and to remember that
Mexico and all the Indians were in the hands of God, and
he made me promise never to take sides against God. He
was an old man when he died, seventy-five.”

.Kate could see the spell of the old bishop’s strong, rather
grandiose personality upon the impressionable Indian. She
could see the curious recoil into chastity, perhaps character¬
istic of the savage. And at the same time she felt the in¬
tense masculine yearning, coupled with a certain male fero¬
city, in the man’s breast.

“ Your husband was James Joachim Leslie, the famous
Irish leader? ” he asked her : and added :

“ You had no children? ”

“ No. I wanted Joachim’s children so much, but I
didn’t have any. But I have a boy and a girl from my first
marriage. My first husband was a lawyer, and I was
divorced from him for Joachim.”

“ Did you like him—that first one? ”

“ Yes. I liked him. But I never felt anything very deep
for him. I married him when I was young, and he was a
good deal older than I. I was fond of him, in a way. But
I had never realised that one could be more than fond of a
man, till I knew Joachim. I thought that was all one could
ever expect to feel—that you just liked a man, and that he
was in love with you. It took me years to understand that
a woman canH love a man—at least a woman like I
am can’t—if he is only the sort of good, decent citizen. With
Joachim I came to realise that a woman like me can only
love a man who is fighting to change the world, to make it
freer, more alive. Men like my first husband, who are good
and trustworthy and who work to keep the world going on
well in the same state they found it in, they let you down
horribly, somewhere. You feel so terribly sold. Everything
is just a sell : it becomes so small. A woman who isn’t quite
ordinary herself can only love a man who is fighting for
something beyond the ordinary life.”

“ And your husband fought for Ireland.”

^ es —for Ireland, and for something he never quite real-

70

THE PLUMED SERPENT

ised. He ruined his health. And when he was dying, he
said to me : Kate , perhaps Vve let you down. Perhaps I
haven't really helped Ireland. But I couldn't help my¬
self. I feel as if I'd brought you to the doors of life , and
was leaving you there. Kate , don't be disappointed in
life bccauce of me. I didn't really get anywhere. I haven't
really got anywhere. I feel as if I'd made a mistake. But
perhaps when I'm dead I shall be able to do more for you
than I have done while I was alive. Say you'll never feel
disappointed! "

There was a pause. The memory of the dead man was
coming over her again, and all her grief.

“ And I don’t feel disappointed,” she went on, her voice
beginning to shake. “ But I loved him. And it was bitter,
that he had to die, feeling he hadn’t—hadn’t.”

She put her hands before her face, and the bitter tears
came through her fingers.

Cipriano sat motionless as a statue. But from his breast
came that dark, surging passion of tenderness the Indians
are capable of. Perhaps it would pass, leaving him indiffer¬
ent and fatalistic again. But at any rate for the moment he
sat in a dark, fiery cloud of passionate male tenderness. He
looked at her soft, wet white hands over her face, and at
the one big emerald on her finger, in a sort of wonder. The
wonder, the mystery, the magic that used to flood over him
as a boy and a youth, when he kneeled before the babyish
figure of the Santa Maria de la Soledad, flooded him again.
He was in the presence of the goddess, white-handed, mys¬
terious, gleaming with a moon-like power and the intense
potency of grief.

Then Kate hastily took her hands from her face and with
head ducked looked for her handkerchief. Of course she
hadn’t got one. Cipriano lent her his, nicely folded. She
took it without a word, and rubbed her face and blew her
nose.

“ I want to go and look at the flowers,” she said in a
strangled voice.

And she dashed into the garden with his handkerchief in
her hand. He stood up and drew aside his chair, to let her
pass, then stood a moment looking at the garden, before he
sat down again and lighted a cigarette.

CHAP : IV. TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY.

Owen had to return to the United States, and he asked Kate
whether she wanted to stay on in Mexico.

This put her into a quandary. It was not an easy country
for a woman to be alone in. And she had been beating her
wings in an effort to get away. She felt like a bird round
whose body a snake has coiled itself. Mexico was the
snake.

The curious influence of the country, pulling one down,
pulling one down. She had heard an old American, who had
been forty years in the Republic, saying to Owen : “ No man
who hasn’t a strong moral backbone should try to settle in
Mexico. If he does, he’ll go to pieces, morally and physi¬
cally, as I’ve seen hundreds of young Americans do.”

To pull one down. It was what the country wanted to do
all the time, with a slow, reptilian insistence, to pull one
down. To prevent the spirit from soaring. To take away
the free, soaring sense of liberty.

“ There is no such thing as liberty,” she heard the quiet,
deep, dangerous voice of Don Ram6n repeating. ” There is
no such thing as liberty. The greatest liberators are usually
slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention
and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial
machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change
one sort of domination for another. All we can do i 9 to
choose our master.”

“ But surely that is liberty—for the mass of people.”

** They don’t choose. They are tricked into a new form
of servility, no more. They go from bad to worse.” *

‘‘ You yourself—aren’t you free? ” she asked.

“ I ? ” he laughed. “ I spent a long time trying to pre¬
tend. I thought I could have my own way. Till I realised
that having my own way meant only running about smelling
all the things in the street, like a dog that will pick up some-
Of myself, I have no way. No man has any way in
mmself. Every man who goes along a way is led by one of

nree things : by an appetite—and I class ambition among
appetite; or by an idea; or by an inspiration.”

77

78

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ I used to think my husband was inspired about Ire¬
land,” said Kate doubtfully.

“ And now ? ”

“ Yes 1 Perhaps he put his wine in old, rotten bottles
that wouldn’t hold it. No !—Liberty is a rotten old wine¬
skin. It won’t hold one’s wine of inspiration or passion any
more,” she said.

“ And Mexico ! ” he said. “ Mexico is another Ireland.
Ah no, no man can be his own master. If I must serve, I
will not serve an idea, which cracks and leaks like an old
wine-skin. I will serve the God that gives me my manhood.
There is no liberty for a man, apart from the God of his man¬
hood. Free Mexico is a bully, and the old, colonial, ecclesi¬
astical Mexico was another sort of bully. When man has
nothing but his will to assert—even his good-will—it is al¬
ways bullying. Bolshevism is one sort of bullying, capitalism
another : and liberty is a change of chains.”

“ Then what’s to be done? ” said Kate. “ Just notn-
ing? ”

And with her own will, she wanted nothing to be done.
Let the skies fall!

“ One is driven, at last, back to the far distance, to look
for God,” said Ramon uneasily.

“ I rather hate this search-for-God business, and religi¬
osity,” said Kate.

“ I know ! ” he said, with a laugh. “ I’ve suffered from
would-be-cocksure religion myself.”

“ And you can’t really * find God ’ 1 ” she said. “ It’s a
sort of sentimentalism, and creeping back into old, hollow
shells.”

“ No ! ” he said slowly. “ I can’t find God, in the old
sense. I know it’s a sentimentalism if I pretend to. But I
am nauseated with humanity and the human will : even with
my own will. I have realised that my will, no matter how
intelligent I am, is only another nuisance on the face of the
earth, once I start exerting it. And other people’s wills are
even worse.”

« Oh 1 isn’t human life horrible ! ” she cried. “ Every
human being exerting his will all the time—over other
people, and over himself, and nearly always self-righteous 1 ”

Ram6n made a grimace of repulsion.

“ To me,” he said, “ that is just the weariness of life 1

TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY 79

For a time, it can be amusing : exerting your own will, and
resisting all the other people’s wills, that they try to put
over you. But at a certain point, a nausea sets in at the very
middle of me : my soul is nauseated. My soul is nauseated,
and there is nothing but death ahead, unless I find something
clsCi^

Kate listened in silence. She knew the road he had gone,
but she herself had not yet come to the end of it. As yet
she was still strong in the pride of her own—her very own
will.

“ Oh, people are repulsive ! ” she cried.

“ My own will becomes even more repulsive at last,” he
said. “ My own will, merely as my own will, is even more
distasteful to me than other people’s wills. From being the
god in my own machine, I must either abdicate, or die of
disgust—self-disgust, at that.”

“ How amusing ! ” she cried.

“ It is rather funny,” he said sardonically.

“ And then ? ” she asked, looking at him with a certain
malevolent challenge.

He looked back at her slowly, with an ironical light in his
eyes.

“ Then 1 ” he repeated. “ Then !—I ask, what else is
there in the world, besides human will, human appetite?
because ideas and ideals are only instruments of human will
and appetite.”

“Not entirely,” said Kate. “ They may be disinter¬
ested.”

“ May they ? If the appetite isn’t interested, the will is.”

“Why not? ” she mocked. “ We can’t be mere de¬
tached blocks.”

“ It nauseates me—I look for something else.”

“ And what do you find ? ”

“ My own manhood ! ”

“ What does that mean? ” she cried, jeering.

“ If you looked, and found your own womanhood, you
would know.”

“ But I have my own womanhood 1 ” she cried.

And then—when you find your own manhood—your
womanhood,” he went on, smiling faintly at her—“ then
you^know it is not your own, to do as you like with. You
don’t have it of your own will. It comes from—from the

80

THE PLUMED SERPENT

middle—from the God. Beyond me, at the middle, is the
God. And the God gives me my manhood, then leaves me to
it. I have nothing but my manhood. The God gives it me,
and leaves me to do further.”

Kate would not hear any more. She broke off into banal-
ties.

The immediate question, for her, was whether she would
stay in Mexico or not. She was not really concerned with
Don Ramon’s soul—or even her own. She was concerned
with her immediate future. Should she stay in Mexico?
Mexico meant the dark-faced men in cotton clothes, big
hats : the peasants, peons, pelados, Indians, call them what
you will. The mere natives.

Those pale-faced Mexicans of the Capital, politicians,
artists, professionals, and business people, they did not inter¬
est her. Neither did the hacendados and the ranch-owners,
in their tight trousers and weak, soft sensuality, pale vic¬
tims of their own emotional undiscipline. Mexico still meant
the mass of silent peons, to her. And she thought of them
again, these silent, stiff-backed men, driving their strings of
asses along the country roads, in the dust of Mexico’s in¬
finite dryness, past broken walls, broken houses, broken
haciendas, along the endless desolation left by the revolu¬
tions ; past the vast stretches of maguey, the huge cactus, or
aloe, with its gigantic rosette of upstarting, pointed leaves,
that in its iron rows covers miles and miles of ground in the
Valley of Mexico, cultivated for the making of that bad¬
smelling drink, pulque. The Mediterranean has the dark
grape, old Europe has malted beer, and China has opium
from the white poppy. But out of the Mexican soil a bunch
of black-tarnished swords bursts up, and a great unfolded
bud of the once-flowering monster begins to thrust at the
sky. They cut the great phallic bud and crush out the
sperm-like juice for the pulque. Agtia miel! Pulque!

But better pulque than the fiery white brandy distilled
from the maguey : mescal, tequila : or in the low lands, the

hateful sugar-cane brandy, aguardiente.

And the Mexican burns out his stomach with those
beastly fire-waters and cauterises the hurt with red-hot chili.

Swallowing one hell-fire to put out another.

Tall fields of wheat and maize. Taller, more brilliant
fields of bright-green sugar-cane. And threading in white

81

TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY

cotton clothes, with dark, half-visible face the eternal peon
of Mexico, his great white calico drawers flopping round his
ankles as he walks, or rolled up over his dark, handsome

*The wild, sombre, erect men of the north ! The too-often
degenerate men of Mexico Valley, their heads through the
middle of their ponchos 1 The big men in Tascala, selling
ice-cream or huge half-sweetened buns and fancy bread .
The quick little Indians, quick as spiders, down in Oaxaca .
The queer-looking half-Chinese natives towards Vera Cruz !
The dark faces and the big black eyes on the coast of Sina¬
loa l The handsome men of Jalisco, with a scarlet blanket
folded on one shoulder !

They were of many tribes and many languages, and far
more alien to one another than Frenchmen, English, and
Germans are. Mexico! It is not really even the beginnings
of a nation : hence the rabid assertion of nationalism in the
few. And it is not a race.

Yet it is a people. There is some Indian quality which
pervades the whole. Whether it is men in blue overalls and
a slouch, in Mexico City, or men with handsome legs in skin¬
tight trousers, or the floppy, white, cotton-clad labourers in
the fields, there is something mysteriously in common. The
erect, prancing walk, stepping out from the base of the
spine with lifted knees and short steps. The jaunty balanc¬
ing of the huge hats. The thrown-back shoulders with a
folded sarape like a royal mantle. And most of them hand¬
some, with dark, warm-bronze skin so smooth and living,
their proudly-held heads, whose black hair gleams like wild,
rich feathers. Their big, bright black eyes that look at you
wonderingly, and have no centre to them. Their sudden,
charming smile, when you smile first. But the eyes un¬
changed.

Yes, and she had to remember, too, a fair proportion of
smaller, sometimes insignificant looking men, some of them
scaly with dirt, who looked at you with a cold, mud-like
antagonism as they stepped cattishly past. Poisonous, thin,
stiff little men, cold and unliving like scorpions, and ns
dangerous.

And then the truly terrible faces of some creatures in the
city, slightly swollen with the poison of tequila, and with
black, dimmed, swivel eyes swinging in pure evil. Never

82

THE PLUMED SERPENT

had she seen such faces of pure brutish evil, cold and insect¬
like, as in Mexico City.

The country gave her a strange feeling of hopelessness and
of dauntlessness. Unbroken, eternally resistant, it was a
people that lived without hope, and without care. Gay
even, and laughing with indifferent carelessness.

They were something like her own Irish, but gone to a
much greater length. And also, they did what the self-con¬
scious and pretentious Irish rarely do, they touched her
bowels with a strange fire of compassion.

At the same time, she feared them. They would pull her
down, pull her down, to the dark depths of nothingness.

It was the same with the women. In their full long skirts
and bare feet, and with the big, dark-blue scarf or shawl
called a rebozo over their womanly small heads and tight
round their shoulders, they were images of wild submissive¬
ness, the primitive womanliness of the world, that is so
touching and so alien. Many women kneeling in a dim
church, all hooded in their dark-blue rebozos, the pallor of
their skirts on the floor, their heads and shoulders wrapped
dark and tight, as they swayed with devotion of fear and
ecstasy 1 A churchful of dark-wrapped women sunk there in
wild, humble supplication of dread and of bliss filled Kate
with tenderness and revulsion. They crouched like people
not quite created.

Their soft, untidy black hair, which they scratched for
lice; the round-eyed baby joggling like a pumpkin in the
shawl slung over the woman’s shoulder, the never-washed
feet and ankles, again somewhat reptilian under the long,
flounced, soiled cotton skirt; and then, once more, the dark
eyes of half-created women, soft, appealing, yet with a queer
void insolence ! Something lurking, where the womanly
centre should have been; lurking snake-like. Fear ! The
fear of not being able to find full creation. And the inevi¬
table mistrust and lurking insolence, insolent against a
higher creation, the same thing that is in the striking of a
snake.

Kate, as a woman, feared the women more than the men.
The women were little and insidious, the men were bigger
and more reckless. But in the eyes of each, the uncreated
centre, where the evil and the insolence lurked.

And sometimes she wondered whether America really was

88

TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY

the great death-continent, the great No! to the European
and Asiatic and even African Yes! Was it really the great
melting pot, where men from the creative continents were
smelted back again, not to a new creation, but down into
the homogeneity of death? Was it the great continent of
the undoing, and all its peoples the agents of the mystic
destruction 1 Plucking, plucking at the created soul in a
man, till at last it plucked out the growing germ, and left
him a creature of mechanism and automatic reaction, with
only one inspiration, the desire to pluck the quick out of
every living spontaneous creature.

Was that the clue to America, she sometimes wondered.
Was it the great death-continent, the continent that de¬
stroyed again what the other continents had built up. The
continent whose spirit of place fought purely to pick the eyes
out of the face of God. Was that America?

And all the people who went there, Europeans, negroes,
Japanese, Chinese, all the colours and the races, were they
the spent people, in whom the God impulse had collapsed,
so they crossed to the great continent of the negation, where
the human will declares itself “ free,” to pull down the soul
of the world? Was it so? And did this account for the
great drift to the New World, the drift of spent souls passing
over to the side of Godless democracy, energetic negation ?
The negation which is the life-breath of materialism. And
would the great negative pull of the Americans at last
break the heart of the world ?

This thought would come to her, time and again.

She herself, what had she come to America for ?

Because the flow of her life had broken, and she knew she
could not re-start it, in Europe.

These handsome natives 1 Was it because they were
death-worshippers. Moloch-worshippers, that they were so
uncowed and handsome? Their pure acknowledgment of
death, and their undaunted admission of nothingness kept
so erect and careless.

White men had had a soul, and lost it. The pivot of fire
had been quenched in them, and their lives had started to
spin in the reversed direction, widdershins. That reversed
look which is in the eyes of so many white people, the look
of nullity, and life wheeling in the reversed direction.
Widdershins.

84

THE PLUMED SERPENT

But the dark-faced natives, with their strange soft flame of
life wheeling upon a dark void : were they centreless and
widdershins too, as so many white men now are ?

The strange, soft flame of courage in the black Mexican
eyes. But still it was not knit to a centre, that centre which
is the soul of a man in a man.

And all the efforts of white men to br_ig the soul of the
dark men of Mexico into final clinched being has resulted in
nothing but the collapse of the white man. Against the
soft, dark flow of the Indian the white man at last collapses,
with his God and his energy he collapses. In attempting to
convert the dark man to the white man’s way of life, the
white man has fallen helplessly down the hole he wanted to
fill up. Seeking to save another man’s soul, the white man
lost his own, and collapsed upon himself.

Mexico ! The great, precipitous, dry, savage country,
with a handsome church in every landscape, rising as it were
out of nothing. A revolution broken landscape, with linger¬
ing, tall, handsome churches whose domes are like inflations
that are going to burst, and whose pinnacles and towers are
like the trembling pagodas of an unreal race. Gorgeous
churches waiting, above the huts and straw hovels of the
natives, like ghosts to be dismissed.

And noble ruined haciendas, with ruined avenues ap¬
proaching their broken splendour.

And the cities of Mexico, great and small, that the
Spaniards conjured up out of nothing. Stones live and die
with the spirit of the builders. And the spirit of Spaniards
in Mexico dies, and the very stones in the building die. The
natives drift into the centre of the plazas again, and in
unspeakable empty weariness the Spanish buildings stand
around, in a sort of dry exhaustion.

The conquered race ! Cortes came with his iron heel and
his iron will, a conqueror. But a conquered race, unless
grafted with a new inspiration, slowly sucks the blood of the
conquerors, in the silence of a strange night and the heavi¬
ness of a hopeless will. So that now, the race of the con¬
querors in Mexico is soft and boneless, children crying in
helpless hopelessness.

Was it the dark negation of the continent ?

Kate could not look at the stones of the National Museum
in Mexico without depression and dread. Snakes coiled like

TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY

85

excrement, snakes fanged and feathered beyond ali dreams
of dread. And that was all.

The ponderous pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacan, the
House of Quetzalcoatl wreathed with the snake of all snakes,
his huge fangs white and pure to-day as in the lost centuries
when his makers were alive. He has not died. He is not so
dead as the Spanish churches, this all-enwreathing dragon of
the horror of Mexico.

Cholula, with its church where the altar was ! And the
same ponderousness, the same unspeakable sense of weight
and downward pressure of the blunt pyramid. Down-sink¬
ing pressure and depression. And the great market-place
with its lingering dread and fascination.

Mitla under its hills, in the parched valley where a wind
blows the dust and the dead souls of the vanished race in
terrible gusts. The carved courts of Mitla, with a hard,
sharp-angled, intricate fascination, but the fascination of
fear and repellance. Hard, four-square, sharp-edged, cut-
ting, zig-zagging Mitla, like continual blows of a stone axe.
Without gentleness or grace or charm. Oh America, with
your unspeakable hard lack of charm, what then is your
final meaning ! Is it forever the knife of sacrifice, as you put
out your tongue at the world ?

Charmless America! With your hard, vindictive beauty,
are you waiting forever to smite death ? Is the world your
everlasting victim ?

So long as it will let itself be victimised.

But yet! But yet 1 The gentle voices of the natives.

The voices of the boys, like birds twittering among the trees

of the plaza of Tehuacan 1 The soft touch, the gentleness.

Was it the dark-fingered quietness of death, and the music

of the presence of death in their voices ?

She thought again of what Don Ram6n had said to
her.

“ They pull you down ! Mexico pulls you down, the
people pull you down like a great weight! But it may be
they pull you down as the earth’s pull of gravitation does,
that you can balance on your feet. Maybe they draw you
down as the earth draws down the roots of a tree, so that
it may be clinched deep in soil. Men are still part of the
tree of Life, and the roots go down to the centre of the
earth. Loose leaves, and aeroplanes, blow away on the

86

THE PLUMED SERPENT

wind, in what they call freedom. But the Tree of Life has
fixed, deep, gripping roots.

“ It may be you need to be drawn down, down, till you
send roots into the deep places again. Then you can send
up the sap and the leaves back to the sky, later.

“ And to me, the men in Mexico are like trees, forests that
the white men felled in their coming. But the roots of the
trees are deep and alive and forever sending up new shoots.

“ And each new shoot that comes up overthrows a Spanish
church or an American factory. And soon the dark forest
will rise again, and shake the Spanish buildings from the face
of America.

“ All that matters to me are the roots that reach down be¬
yond all destruction. The roots and the life are there. What
else it needs is the word, for the forest to begin to rise again.
And some man among men must speak the word.”

The strange doom-like sound of the man’s words ! But
in spite of the sense of doom on her heart, she would not go
away yet. She would stay longer in Mexico.

CHAP : V. THE LAKE.

Owen left, T7 illiers stayed on a few days to escort Kate to
the lake. If she liked it there, and could find a house, she
could stay by herself. She knew sufficient people in Mexico
and in Guadalajara to prevent her from being lonely. But
she still shrank from travelling alone in this country.

She wanted to leave the city. The new President had
come in quietly enough, but there was an ugly feeling of
uppishness in the lower classes, the bottom dog clambering
niangily to the top. Kate was no snob. Man or woman,
she cared nothing about the social class. But meanness,
sordidness she hated. She hated bottom dogs. They all
were mangy, they all were full of envy and malice, many
had the rabies. Ah no, let us defend ourselves from the
bottom dog, with its mean growl and its yellow teeth.

She had tea with Cipriano before leaving.

“How do you get along with the Government? ” she
asked.

“ I stand for the law and the constitution,” he said.
“ They know I don’t want anything to do with cuartelazos
or revolutions. Don Ram6n is my chief.”

“ In what way ? ”

“ Later, you will see.”

He had a secret, important to himself, on which he was
sitting tight. But he looked at her with shining eyes, as
much as to say that soon she would share the secret, and
then he would be much happier.

He watched her curiously, from under his wary black
lashes. She was one of the rather plump Irishwomen, with
soft brown hair and hazel eyes, and a beautiful, rather dis¬
tant repose. Her gTeat charm was her soft repose, and her
gentle, unconscious inaccessibility. She was taller and bigger
than Cipriano : he was almost boyishly small. But he was
all energy, and his eyebrows tilted black and with a bar¬
barian conceit, above his full, almost insolent black eyes.

He watched her continually, with a kind of fascination : the
same spell that the absurd little figures of the doll Madonna
ad cast over him as a boy. She was the mystery, and he
e adorer, under the semi-ecstatic spell of the mystery.

87

88

THE PLUMED SERPENT

But once he rose from his knees, he rose in the same strut¬
ting conceit of himself as before he knelt : with all his adora¬
tion in his pocket again. But he had a good deal of mag¬
netic power. His education had not diminished it. His
education lay like a film ot white oil on the black lake of his
barbarian consciousness. For this reason, the things he said
were hardly interesting at all. Only what he was. He made
the air around him seem darker, but richer and fuller.
Sometimes his presence was extraordinarily grateful, like a
healing of the blood. And sometimes he was an intolerable
weight on her. She gasped to get away from him.

** You think a great deal of Don Ramon ? ” she said to

him.

“ Yes,” he said, his black eyes watching her. “ He is a

very fine man.” .

How trivial the words sounded ! That was another boring
thing about him : his English seemed so trivial. lie wasn’t
really expressing himself. He was only flipping at the white
oil that lay on his surface.

“ You like him better than the Bishop, your god-father?

He lifted his shoulders in a twisted, embarrassed shrug.

“ The same ! ” he said. “ I like him the same.”

Then he looked away into the distance, with a certain
hauteur and insolence.

“ Very different, no? ” he said. “ But in some ways, the
same. He knows better what is Mexico. He knows better
what I am. Bishop Severn did not know the real Mexico :
how could he, he was a sincere Catholic I But Don Ram6n

knows the real Mexico, no? ”

« And what is the real Mexico? ” she asked.

« -Well_you must ask Don Ram6n. I can’t explain.

She asked Cipriano about going to the lake.

a Yes ! ” he said. “ You can go ! You will like it. Go
first to Orilla, no ?—you take a ticket on the railway to
Ixtlahuacan. And in Orilla is an hoted with a German
manager. Then from Orilla you can go in a motor-boat, in
a few hours, to Sayula. And there you will find a house to

live in.”

He wanted her to do this, she could tell.

“ How far is Don Ramon’s hacienda from Sayula? she

asked. .

“ Near ! About an hour m a boat.

He is there now.

And

THE LAKE

89

attne beginning of the month I am going with my division
to Guadalajara : now there is a new Governor. So I shall be
quite near 100 .”

“ That will be nice,” she said. •

“ You think so? ” he asked quickly. *

“ Yes,” she said, on her guard, looking at him slowly.

“ 1 should be sorry to lose touch with Don Ramon and

y °He had a little tension on his brow, haughty, unwilling,
conceited, and at the same time, yearning and desirous.

“ You like Don Ramon very much ? ” he said. “ You

want to know him more ? ”

There was a peculiar anxiety in his voice.

“ Yes,” she said. “ One knows so few people in the world
nowadays, that one can respect—and fear a little. I am a
little afraid of Don Ramon : and I have the greatest respect
for him—” she ended on a hot note of sincerity.

“ It is good ! ” he said. “ It is very good. You may
respect him more than any other man in the world.”

“ Perhaps that is true,” she said, turning her eyes slowly
to his.

“ Yes! Yes ! ” he cried impatiently. “ It is true. You
will find out later. And Ram6n likes you. He told me to
ask you to come to the lake. When you come to Sayula,
when you are coming, write to him, and no doubt he can
tell you about a house, and all those things.”

“ Shall I ? ” she said, hesitant.

** Yes. Yes ! of course, we say what we mean.”

Curious little man, with his odd, inflammable hauteur and
conceit, something burning inside him, that gave him no
peace. He had an almost childish faith in the other man.
And yet she was not sure that he did not, in some corner
of his soul, resent Ram6n somewhat.

1 Kate set off by the night train for the west, with Villiers.
The one Pullman coach was full : people going to Guadala¬
jara and Colima and the coast. There were three military
officers, rather shy in their new uniforms, and rather swag¬
gering at the same time, making eyes at the empty air, as
if they felt they were conspicuous, and sitting quickly in
their seats, as if to obliterate themselves. There were two
country farmers or ranchers, in tight trousers and cart¬
wheel hats stitched with silver. One was a tall man with a

90

THE PLUMED SERPENT

big moustache, the other was smaller, grey man. But they
both had the handsome, alive legs of the Mexicans, and the
rather quenched faces. There was a widow buried in crape,
accompanied by a criada, a maid. The rest were townsmen,
Mexicans on business, at once shy and fussy, unobtrusive
and self-important.

The Pullman was clean and neat, with its hot green-plush
seats. But, full of people, it seemed empty compared with a
Pullman in the United States. Everybody was very quiet,
very soft and guarded. The farmers folded their beautiful
sarapes and laid them carefully on the seats, sitting as if
their section were a lonely little place. The officers folded
their cloaks and arranged dozens of little parcels, little card¬
board hatboxes and heterogeneous bundles, under the seats
and on the seats. The business men had the oddest lug¬
gage, canvas hold-alls embroidered in wool, with long, touch¬
ing mottoes.

And in all the crowd, a sense of guardedness and softness
and self-effacement : a curious soft sensibilite, touched with
fear. It was already a somewhat conspicuous thing to travel
in the Pullman, you had to be on your guard.

The evening for once was grey : the rainy season really
approaching. A sudden wind whirled dust and a few spots
of rain. The train drew out of the formless, dry, dust-
smitten areas fringing the city, and wound mildly on for a
few minutes, only to stop in the main street of Tacubaya,
the suburb-village. In the grey approach of evening the
train halted heavily in the street, and Kate looked out at the
men who stood in groups, with their hats tilted against the
wind and their blankets folded over their shoulders and up
to their eyes, against the dust, motionless standing like
sombre ghosts, only a glint of eyes showing between the
dark sarape and the big hat-brim; while donkey-drivers in
a dust-cloud ran frantically, with uplifted arms like demons,
uttering fhort, sharp cries to prevent their donkeys from
poking in between the coaches of the train. Silent dogs
trotted in-and-out under the train, women, their faces
wrapped in their blue rebozos, came to offer tortillas folded
in a cloth to keep them warm, or pulque in an earthenware
mug, or pieces of chicken smothered in red, thick, oily
sauce; or oranges or bananas or pitahayas, anything. And
when few people bought, because of the dust, the women

THE LAKE

01

put their wares under their arm, under the blue rebozo, and
covered their faces and motionless watched the train.

It was about six o’clock. The earth was utterly dry and
stale. Somebody was kindling charcoal in front of a house.
Men were hurrying down the wind, balancing their great hats
curiously. Horsemen on quick, fine little horses, guns slung
behind, trotted up to the train, lingered, then trotted quickly
away again into nowhere.

Still the train stood in the street. Kate and Villiers got
down. They watched the sparks blowing from the charcoal
which a little girl was kindling in the street, to cook tortillas.

The train had a second-class coach and a first-class. The
second class was jam-full of peasants, Indians, piled in like
chickens with their bundles and baskets and bottles, endless
things. One woman had a fine peacock under her arm. She
put it down and in vain tried to suppress it beneath her
voluminous skirts. It refused to be suppressed. She took
it up and balanced it on her knee, and looked round again
over the medley of jars, baskets, pumpkins, melons, guns,
bundles and human beings.

In the front was a steel car with a guard of little scrubby
soldiers in their dirty cotton uniforms. Some soldiers were
mounted on top of the train with their guns : the look-out.

And the whole train, seething with life, was curiously still,
subdued. Perhaps it is the perpetual sense of danger which
makes the people so hushed, without clamour or stridency.
And with an odd, hushed politeness among them. A sort of
demon-world.

At last the train moved on. If it had waited forever, no
one would have been deeply surprised. For what might not
e ahead ? Rebels, bandits, bridges blown up—anything,
owever, quietly, stealthily, the train moved out and
along the great weary valley. The circling mountains, so

SuSu*! Wer< T J nvislbIe save ne »r at hand. In a few broken

hi Ilf ,*5" a . blt ° f fire s P arked red - The adobe was grey¬
ed’ of the lava dust, depressing. Into the distance the

eatifn Spl T^ dl7, Wlth ? er f and there P atcbes of green irri-
sunnnrV^ Ther *l- WaS * h \ oken hacienda with columns that
in P th/lh r hm £ D *? kness was coming, dust still blew

stale Aweary 0 gloom? * encom P ass ^ “ “ dry,

Then there came a heavy shower. The train was passing

92

THE PLUMED SERPENT

a pulque hacienda. The rows of the giant maguey stretched
bristling their iron-black barbs in the gloom.

All at once, the lights came on, the Pullman attendant
came swiftly lowering the blinds, so that the brilliance of
the windows should attract no bullets from the dark out¬
side.

There was a poor little meal at exorbitant prices, and when
this was cleared away, the attendant came with a clash to
make the beds, pulling down the upper berths. It was only
eight o’clock, and the passengers looked up in resentment.
But no good. The pug-faced Mexican in charge, and his
small-pox-pitted assistant insolently came in between the
seats, inserted the key over-head, and brought down the
berth with a crash. And the Mexican passengers humbly
crawled away to the smoking-room or the toilet, like whipped

dogs.

At half-past eight everybody was silently and with intense
discretion going to bed. None of the collar-stud-snapping
bustle and “homely” familiarity of the United States.
Like subdued animals they all crept in behind their green
serge curtains.

Kate hated a Pullman, the discreet indiscretion, the
horrible nearness of other people, like so many larvae in so
many sections, behind the green serge curtains. Above all,
the horrible intimacy of the noise of going to bed. She hated
to undress, struggling in the oven of her berth, with her
elbow bucting into the stomach of the attendant who was
buttoning up the green curtain outside.

And yet, once she was in bed and could put out her light
and raise the window blind, she had to admit it was better
than a ivaf>on-lit in Europe : and perhaps the best that can
be done for people who must travel through the night in

trains. .

There was a rather cold wind, atter the ram, up there on

that high plateau. The moon had risen, the sky was clear.
Rocks,'"and tall organ cactus, and more miles of maguey.
Then the train stopped at a dark little station on the rim
of the slope, where men swathed in dark sarapes held dusky,
ruddy lanterns that lit up no faces at all, only dark gaps.
Why did the train stay so long? Was something wrong?

At last they were going again. Under the moon she saw
beyond her a long downslo". of rocks and cactus, and in the

THE LAKE

98

distance below, the lights of a town. She lay in her berth
watching the train wind slowly down the wild, rugged slope.
Then she dozed.

To wake at a station that looked like a quiet inferno, with
dark faces coming near the windows, glittering eyes in the
half-light, women in their rebozos running along the train
balancing dishes of meat, tamales, tortillas on one hand,
black-faced men with fruit and sweets, and all calling in a
subdued, intense, hushed hubbub. Strange and glaring, she
saw eyes at the dark screen of the Pullman, sudden hands
thrusting up something to sell. In fear, Kate dropped her
window. .The wire screen was not enough.

The platform below the Pullman all was dark. But at the
back of the train she could see the glare of the first-class
windows, on the dark station. And a man selling sweet¬
meats— Cajetas! Cnjetas! La de Celaya!

She was safe inside the Pullman, with nothing to do but
to listen to an occasional cough behind the green curtains,
and to feel the faint bristling apprehension of all the Mexi¬
cans in their dark berths. The dark Pullman was full of a
subdued apprehension, fear !*st there might be some attack
on the train.

She went to sleep and woke at a bright station : probably
Queretaro. The green trees looked theatrical in the electric
light. Opales! she heard the men calling softly. If Owen
had been there he would have got up in his pyjamas to buy
opals. The call would have been too strong.

She slept fitfully, in the shaken saloon, vaguely aware of
stations and the deep night of the open country. Then she
started from a complete sleep. The train was dead still, no
sound. Then a tremendous jerking as the Pullman was
shunted. It must be Irapuato, where they branched to the
west.

She would arrive at Ixtlahuacan soon after six in the morn¬
ing. The man woke her at daybreak, before the sun had
risen. Dry country with mesquite bushes, in the dawn : then
green wheat alternating with ripe wheat. And men already
in the pale, ripened wheat reaping with sickles, cutting short
little handfulls from the short straw. A bright sky, with a

f, U yfv s ^ n ^ ow on eal> th. Parched slopes with ragged maize
stubble. Then a forlorn hacienda and a man on horseback,
m a blanket, driving a sileDt flock of cows, 6heep, bulls,

94

THE PLUMED SERPENT

goats, lambs, rippling a bit ghostly in the dawn, from under
a tottering archway. A long canal beside the railway, a long
canal paved with bright green leaves from which poked the
mauve heads of the lirio, the water hyacinth. The sun was
lifting up, red. In a moment, it was the full, dazzling gold
of a Mexican morning.

Kate was dressed and ready, sitting facing Villiers, when
they came to Ixtlahuacan. The man carried out her bags.
The train drifted in to a desert of a station. They got down.
It was a new day.

In the powerful light of morning, under a turquoise blue
sky, she gazed at the helpless-looking station, railway lines,
some standing trucks, and a remote lifelessness. A boy
seized their bags and ran across the lines to the station yard,
which was paved with cobble stones, but overgrown with
weeds. At one side stood an old tram-car with two mules,
like a relic. One or two men, swathed up to the eyes in
scarlet blankets, were crossing on silent white legs.

“ Adonde ? ” said the boy.

But Kate went to see her big luggage taken out. It was all
there.

“ Orilla Hotel,” said Kate.

The boy said they must go in the tram-car, so in the tram-
car they went. The driver whipped his mules, they rolled
in the still, heavy morning light away down an uneven,
cobbled road with holes in it, between walls with falling
mortar and low, black adobe houses, in the peculiar vacuous
depression of a helpless little Mexican town, towards the
plaza. The strange emptiness, everything empty of

life !

Occasional men on horseback clattered suddenly by, occa¬
sional big men in scarlet sarapes went noiselessly on their
own way, under the big hats. A boy on a high mule was
delivering milk from red globe-shaped jars slung on cither
side his mount. The street was stony, uneven, vacuous,
sterile. The stones seemed dead, the town seemed made of
dead stone. The human life came with a slow, sterile un¬
willingness, in spite of the low-hung power of the sun.

At length they were in the plaza, where brilliant trees
flowered in a blaze of pure scarlet, and some in pure laven¬
der, around the basins of milky-looking water. Milky-dim
the water bubbled up in the basins, and women, bleary with

THE LAKE

95

sleep, uncombed, came from under the delapidated arches of
the portales, and across the broken pavement, to fill their
water-jars.

The tram stopped and they got down. The boy got down
with the bags, and told them they must go to the river to
take a boat.

They followed obediently down the smashed pavements,
where every moment you might twist your ankle or break
your leg. Everywhere the same weary indifference and
brokenness, a sense of dirt and of helplessness, squalor of far-
gone indifference, under the perfect morning sky, in the pure
sunshine and the pure Mexican air. The sense of life ebbing
away, leaving dry ruin.

They came to the edge of the town, to a dusty, humped
bridge, a broken wall, a pale-brown stream flowing full.
Below the bridge a cluster of men.

Each one wanted her to hire his boat. She demanded a
motor-boat: the boat from the hotel. They said there
wasn’t one. She didn’t believe it. Then a dark-faced fellow
with his black hair down his forehead, and a certain intensity
in his eyes, said : Yes, yes; The Hotel had a boat, but it
was broken. She must take a row-boat. In an hour and a
half he would row her there.

“ How long? ” said Kate.

“ An hour and a half.”

“ And I am so hungry 1 ” cried Kate. “ How much do
you charge ? ”

“ Two pesos.” He held up two fingers.

Kate said yes, and he ran down to his boat. Then she
noticed he was a cripple with inturned feet. But how quick
and strong!

She climbed with Villiers down the broken bank to the
river, and in a moment they were in the boat. Pale green
willow trees fringed from the earthen banks to the fuller-
flowing, pale-brown water. The river was not very wide,
between deep banks. They slipped under the bridge, and
past a funny high barge with rows of seats. The boatman
said it went up the river to Jocotlan : and he waved his hand
to show the direction. They were slipping down-stream,
between lpnely banks of willow-trees.

crippled boatman was pulling hard, with great
■trength and energy. When she spoke to him in her bad

96

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Spanish and he found it hard to understand, he knitted his
brow a little, anxiously. And when she laughed he smiled
at her with such a beautiful gentleness, sensitive, wistful,
quick. She felt he was naturally honest and truthful, and
generotic. There was a beauty in these men, a wistful
beauty and a great physical strength. Why had she felt so
bitterly about the country?

Morning was still young on the pale buff river, between
the silent earthen banks. There was a blue dimness in the
lower air, and black water-fowl ran swiftly, unconcernedly
back and forth from the river’s edge, on the dry, baked
banks that were treeless now, and wider. They had entered
a wide river, from the narrow one. The blueness and moist¬
ness of the dissolved night seemed to linger under the scat¬
tered pepper-trees of the far shore.

The boatman rowed short and hard upon the flimsy, soft,
sperm-like water, only pausing at moments swiftly to smear
the sweat from his face with an old rag he kept on the bench
beside him. The sweat ran from his bronze-brown skin like
water, and the black hair on his high-domed, Indian head,
smoked with wetness.

“ There is no hurry,” said Kate, smiling to him.

“ What does the Senorita say? ”

“ There is no hurry,” she repeated.

He paused, smiling, breathing deeply, and explained that
now he was rowing against stream. This wider river flowed
out of the lake, full and heavy. See ! even as he rested a
moment, the boat began to turn and drift! He quickly took

his oars. .

The boat moved slowly, in the hush of departed night,
upon the soft, full-flowing buff water, that carried little
tufts of floating water-hyacinth. Some willow-trees stood
near the edge, and some pepper trees of most delicate green
foliage. Beyond the trees and the level of the shores, big
hills rose up to high, blunt points, baked incredibly dry,
like biscuit. The blue sky settled against them nakedly,
they were leafless and lifeless save for the iron-green shafts
of the organ cactus, that glistered blackly, yet atmospheric¬
ally, in the ochreous aridity. This was Mexico again, stark-
dry and luminous with powerful light, cruel and unreal.

On a flat near the river a peon, perched on the rump of
his ass, was slowly driving five luxurious cows towards the

THE LAKE

07

water to drink. The big black-and-white animals stepped
in a dream-pace past the pepper-trees to the bank, like mov¬
ing pieces of light-and-shade : the dun pows trailed after,
in the incredible silence and brilliance of the morning.

Earth, air, water were all silent with new light, the last
blue of night dissolving like a breath. No sound, even no
life. The great light was stronger than life itself. Only, up
in the blue, some turkey-buzzards were wheeling with dirty-
edged wings, as everwhere in Mexico.

“ Don’t hurry ! ” Kate said again to the boatman, who
was again mopping his face, while his black hair ran sweat.
“ We can go slowly.”

The man smiled deprecatingly.

“ If the Seiiorita will sit in the back,” he said.

Kate did not understand his request at first. He had
rowed in towards a bend in the right bank, to be out of the
current. On the left bank Kate had noticed some men
bathing : men whose wet skins flashed with the beautiful
brown-rose colour and glitter of the naked natives, and one
stout man with the curious creamy-biscuit skin of the city
Mexicans. Low against the water across-stream she watched
the glitter of naked men, half-immersed in the river.

She rose to step back into the stern of the boat, where
Villiers was. As she did so, she saw a dark head and the
flashing ruddy shoulders of a man swimming towards the
boat. She wavered—and as she was sitting down, the man
stood up in the water and was wading near, the water wash¬
ing at the loose little cloth he had round his loins. He was
smooth and wet and of a lovely colour, with the rich smooth¬
muscled physique of the Indians. He was coming towards
the boat, pushing back his hair from his forehead.

The boatman watched him, transfixed, without surprise,
a little subtle half-smile, perhaps of mockery, round his nose.
As if he had expected it!

Where ^e you going? ” asked the man in the water,
the brown river running softly at his strong thighs.

The boatman waited a moment for his patrons to answer,

tone’* Seeilie tkey WCre sdent, re P lie< * m a low, unwilling

“ Orilla.”

thJk 5 in the Water took hold of the stern of the boat, as
the boatman softly touched the water with the oars to keep-

08

THE PLUMED SERPENT

her straight, and he threw back his longish black hair with a
certain effrontery.

“ Do you know whom the lake belongs to? ” he asked,
with the same effrontery.

“ What do you say ? ” asked Kate, haughty.

“ If you know whom the lake belongs to? ” the young
man in the water repeated.

“ To whom ? ” said Kate, flustered.

“ To the old gods of Mexico,” the stranger said. “ You
have to make a tribute to Quetzalcoatl, if you go on the

lake.” .

The strange calm effrontery of it! But truly Mexican.

“ How? ” said Kate.

“ You can give me something,” he said.

“ But why should I give something to you, if it is a tribute

to Quetzalcoatl ? ” she stammered.

“ I am Quetzalcoatl’s man, I,” he replied, with calm

effrontery.

“ And if I don’t give you anything ? she said.

He lifted his shoulders and spread his free hand, staggering
a little, losing his footing in the water as he did so.

“ jf you wish to make an enemy of the lake 1— he said,

coolly, as he recovered his balance. . , . ,

And then for the first time he looked straight at her. And
as he did so, the demonish effrontery died down again, and
the peculiar American tension slackened and left him.

He gave a slight wave of dismissal with his free hand,

and pushed the boat gently forward.

“ But it doesn’t matter,” he said, with a slight insolent
jerk of his head sideways, and a faint, insolent smile. W e

will wait till the Morning Star rises.”

The boatman softly but powerfully pulled the oars. The
man in the water stood with the sun on his powerful chest,
looking after the boat in half-seeing abstraction. His eyes
had taken again the peculiar gleaming far-awayness, sus¬
pended between the realities, which, Kate suddenly realised,
was the central look in the native eyes. The boatman,
rowing away, was glancing back at the man who stood in the
waterf and his face, too, had the abstracted, transfigured
look of a man perfectly suspended between the wodd s t
strenuous wings of energy. A look of extraordinary, arrest-
mg beauty, the silent, vulnerable centre of all life's quiver-

THE LAKE

99

ing, like the nucleus gleaming in tranquil suspense, within a
cell.

“ What does he mean,” said Kate, “ by ‘ We will wait
till the Morning Star rises ? * ”

The man smiled slowly.

“ It is a name,” he said.

And he seemed to know no more. But the symbolism had
evidently the power to soothe and sustain him.

“ Why did he come and speak to us ? ” asked Kate.

“ He is one of those of the god Quetzalcoatl, Senorita.”

“ And you ? are you one too ? ”

“ Who knows ! ” said the man, putting his head on one
side. Then he added : “ I think so. We are many.”

He watched Kate’s face with that gleaming, intense semi¬
abstraction, a gleam that hung unwavering in his black eyes,
and which suddenly reminded Kate of the morning star, or
the evening star, hanging perfect between night and the
sun.

“ You have the morning star in your eyes,” she said to the
man.

He flashed her a smile of extraordinary beauty.

“ The Senorita understands,” he said.

His face changed again to a dark-brown mask, like semi¬
transparent stone, and he rowed with all his might. Ahead,
the river was widening, the banks were growing lower, down
to the water’s level, like shoals planted with willow trees
and with reeds. Above the willow trees a square white sail
was standing, as if erected on the land.

“ Is the lake so near? ” said Kate.

The man hastily mopped his running wet face.

Yes, Senorita ! The sailing boats are waiting for the
wind/to come into the river. We will pass by the canal.”

He indicated with a backward movement of the head a
narrowj- twisting passage of water between deep reeds. It
made Kate think of the little river Anapo : the same mystery
unbroken. The boatman, with creases half of sadness anil
e ? a ^ a ^ on ^ k* s bronze, still face, was pulling with
• all his might. Water-fowl went swimming into the reeds, or
rose on wing and wheeled into the blue air. Some willow
trees hung a dripping, vivid green, in the stark dry country,
toe stream was narrow and winding. With a nonchalant
motion, first of the right then of the left hand, Villiers was

100

THE PLUMED SERPENT

guiding the boatman, to keep him from r unn ing aground in
the winding, narrow water-way.

And this put Villiers at his ease, to have something prac¬
tical and slightly mechanical to do and to assert. He was
striking the American note once more, of mechanical domi¬
nance.

All the other business had left him incomprehending, and
when he asked Kate, she had pretended not to hear him.
She sensed a certain delicate, tender mystery in the river,
in the naked man in the water, in the boatman, and she
could not bear to have it subjected to the tough American
flippancy. She was weary to death of American automatism
and American flippant toughness. It gave her a feeling of
nausea.

“ Quite a well-built fellow, that one who laid hold of the
boat. What did he want, anyway? ” Villiers insisted.

“ Nothing! ” said Kate.

They were slipping out past the clay-coloured, loose stony
edges of the land, through a surge of ripples, into the wide
white light of the lake. A breeze was coming from the east,
out of the upright morning, and the surface of the shallow,
flimsy, dun-coloured water was in motion. Shoal-water
rustled near at hand. Out to the open, large, square white
sails were stepping gingerly forward, and beyond the buff-
coloured, pale desert of water rose far-away blue, sharp hills
of the other side, many miles away, pure pale blue with dis¬
tance, yet sharp-edged and clear in form.

“ Now,” said the boatman, smiling to Kate, “ it is easier.
Now we are out of the current.”

He pulled rhythmically through the frail-rippling, sperm-
like water, with a sense of peace. And for the first time Kate
felt she had met the mystery of the natives, the strange and
mysterious gentleness between a scylla and a charybdis of
violence; the small poised, perfect body of the bird that
waves wings of thunder annd wings of fire and night, in its
flight. But central between the flash of day and the black
of night, between the flash of lightning and the break of
thunder, the still, soft body of the bird poised and soaring, *
forever. The mystery of the evening-star brilliant in silence
and distance between the downward-surging plunge of the
sun and the vast, hollow seething of inpouring night. The
magnificence of the watchful morning-star, that watches

THE LAKE

101

between the night and the day, the gleaming clue to the two

° P This kind of frail, pure sympathy she felt at the moment
between herself and the boatman, between herself and the
man who had spoken from the water. And she was not gomg
to have it broken by Villiers’ American jokes.

There was a sound of breaking water. The boatman drew
away, and pointed across to where a canoa , a native sailing-
boat, was lying at an angle. She had run aground in a wind,
and now must wait till another wind would carry her off the
submerged bank again. Another boat was coming down the
breeze, steering cautiously among the shoals, for the river
outlet. She was piled high with petates, the native leaf
mats, above her hollowed black sides. And bare-legged men
with loose white drawers rolled up, and brown chests show¬
ing, were running with poles as the shallows heaved up
again, pushing her off, and balancing their huge hats with
small, bird-like shakes of the head.

Beyond the boats, sea-wards, were rocks outcropping and
strange birds like pelicans standing in silhouette, motion¬
less.

They had been crossing a bay of the lake-shore, and were
nearing the hotel. It stood on a parched dry bank above the
pale-brown water, a long, low building amid a tender green
of bananas and pepper-trees. Everywhere the shores rose up
pale and cruelly dry, dry to cruelty, and on the little hills
the dark „tatues of the organ cactus poised in nothingness.

There was a broken-down landing-place, and a boat-house
in the distance, and someone in white flannel trousers was
standing on the broken masonry. Upon the filmy water
ducks and black water-fowl bobbed like corks. The bottom

was stony. The boatman suddenly backed the boat, and
pulled round. He pushed up his sleeve and hung over the
bows, reaching into the water. With a quick motion he
grabbed something, and scrambled into the boat again. He
was holding in the pale-skinned hollow of his palm a little
earthenware pot, crusted by the lake deposit.

M What is it? ” she said.

“ OUitta of the gods,” he said. <s Of the old dead gods.
Take it, Senorita.”

** You must let me pay for it,” she said.

No, Senorita. It is yours.” said the man, with that

102

THE PLUMED SERPENT

sensitive, masculine sincerity which comes sometimes so
quickly from a native.

It was a little, rough round pot with protuberances.

“ Look ! ” said the man, reaching again for the little pot.
He turned it upside-down, and she saw cut-in eyes and the
sticking-out ears of an animal’s head.

“ A cat! ” she exclaimed. “ It is a cat.”

“ Or a coyote ! ”

“ A coyote ! ”

“ Let’s look ! ” said Villiers. “ Why how awfully inter¬
esting ! Do you think it’s old ? ”

“ It is old? ” Kate asked.

“ The time of the old gods,” said the boatman. Then with
a sudden smile : “ The dead gods don’t eat much rice, they
only want little casseroles while they are bone under the
water.” And he looked her in the eyes.

“ While they are bone? ” she repeated. And she realised
he meant the skeletons of gods that cannot die.

They were at the landing stage; or rather, at the heap of
collapsed masonry which had once been a landing stage.
The boatman got out and held the boat steady while Kate
and Villiers landed. Then he scrambled up with the bags.

The man in white trousers, and a mozo appeared. It was
the hotel manager. Kate paid the boatman.

“ Adios, Senorita ! ” he said with a smile. “ May you
go with Quetzacoatl.”

“ Yes ! ” she cried. “ Goodbye ! ”

They went up the slope between the tattered bananas,
whose ragged leaves were making a hushed, distant patter
in the breeze. The green fruit curved out its bristly-soft
bunch, the purple flower-bud depending stifily.

The German manager came to talk to them : a young man
of about forty, with his blue eyes going opaque and stony
behind his spectacles, though the centres were keen. Evi¬
dently a German who had been many years out in Mexico—
out in the lonely places. The rather stiff look, the slight look
of fear in the soul —not physical fear—and the look of defeat,
characteristic of the European who has long been subjected
to the unbroken spirit of place ! But the defeat was in the
soul, not the will.

He showed Kate to her room in the unfinished quarter,
and ordered her breakfast. The hotel consisted of an old

THE LAKE

10ft

low ranch-house with a verandah—and this was the dining¬
room, lounge, kitchen and office. Then there was a two-
storey new wing, with a smart bath-room between each two
bedrooms, and almost up-to-date fittings : very incongruous.

But the new wing was unfinished—had been unfinished for
a dozen years and more, the work abandoned when Porfirio
Diaz fled. Now it would probably never be finished.

And this is Mexico. Whatever pretentiousness and
modern improvements it may have, outside the capital, they
are either smashed or raw and unfinished, with rusty bones
of iron girders sticking out.

Kate washed her hands and went down to breakfast.
Before the long verandah of the old ranch-house, the green
pepper-trees dropped like green light, and small cardinal
birds with scarlet bodies and blazing impertinent heads like
poppy-buds flashed among the pinkish pepper-heads, closing
their brown wings upon the audacity of their glowing redness.
A train of geese passed in the glaring sun, automatic, to¬
wards the eternal tremble of pale, earth-coloured water be¬
yond the stones.

It was a place with, a strange atmosphere : stony, hard,
broken, with round cruel hills and the many-fluted bunches
of the organ-cactus behind the old house, and an ancient road
trailing past, deep in ancient dust. A touch of mystery and
cruelty, the stonyness of fear, a lingering, cruel sacredness.

Kate loitered hungrily, and was glad when the Mexican in
shirt-sleeves and patched trousers, another lingering rem¬
nant of Don Porfirio’s day, brought her her eggs and
coffee.

He was muted as everything about the place seemed
muted, even the very stones and the water. Only those
poppies on wing, the cardinal birds, gave a sense of liveli¬
ness : and they were uncanny.

So swiftly one’s moods changed ! In the boat, she had

glimpsed the superb rich stillness of the morning-star, the

poignant intermediate flashing its quiet between the energies

of the cosmos. She had seen it in the black eyes of the

natives, in the sunrise of the man’s rich, still body, Indian-
warm. J

And now again already the silence was of vacuity, arrest,
and cruelty : the uncanny empty unbearableness of many

exican mornings. Already she was uneasy, suffering from

104 THE PLUMED SERPENT

the malaise which tortures one inwardly in that country ot
cactuses.

She went up to her room, pausing at the corridor window
to look out at the savage little hills that stood at the back
of the hotel in dessicated heaps, with the dark-green bulks
of organ-cactus sticking up mechanically and sinister, sombre
in all the glare. Grey ground-squirrels like rats slithered
ceaselessly around. Sinister, strangely dark and sinister, in
the great glare of the sun 1

She went to her room to be alone. Below her window, in
the bricks and fallen rubble of unfinished masonry, a huge
white turkey-cock, dim-white, strutted with his brown hens.
And sometimes he stretched out his pink wattles and gave
vent to fierce, powerful turkey-yelps, like some strong dog
yelping; or else he ruffled all his feathers like a great, soiled
white peony, and chuffed, hissing here and there, raging the
metal of his plumage.

Below him, the eternal tremble of pale-earth, unreal
waters, far beyond which rose the stiff resistance of moun¬
tains losing their pristine blue. Distinct, frail distances far
off on the dry air, dim-seeing, yet sharp and edged with
menace.

Kate took her bath in the filmy water that was hardly
like water at all. Then she went and sat on the collapsed
masonry, in the shade of the boat-house below. Small
white ducks bobbed about on the shallow water below her,
or dived, raising clouds of submarine dust. A canoe came
paddling in; a lean fellow with sinewy brown legs. He
answered Kate’s nod with the aloof promptness of an
Indian, made fast his canoe inside the boat-house, and was
gone, stepping silent and barefoot over the bright green
water-stones, and leaving a shadow, cold as flint, on the air
behind him.

No sound on the morning save a faint touching of water,
and the occasional powerful yelping of the turkey-cock.
Silence, an aboriginal, empty silence, as of life ivithheld.
The vacuity of a Mexican morning. Resounding sometimes
to the turkey-cock. •

And the great, lymphatic expanse of water, like a sea,
trembling, trembling, trembling to a far distance, to the
mountains of substantial nothingness.

Near at hand, a ragged shifting of banana trees, bare hills

THE LAKE

105

with immobile cactus, and to the left, a hacienda with peon s
square mud boxes of houses. An occasional ranchero in
skin-tight trousers and big hat, rode trotting through the
dust on a small horse, or peons on the rump of their asses,
in floppy white cotton, going like ghosts.

Always something ghostly. The morning passing all of a
piece, empty, vacuous. All sound withheld, all life with¬
held, everything holding back. The land so dry as to have
a quality of invisibility, the water earth-filmy, hardly water
at all. The lymphatic milk of fishes, somebody said.

I

CHAP : VI. THE MOVE DOWN THE LAKE.

In Portfirio Diaz’ day, the Lake-side began to be the
Riviera of Mexico, and Orilla was to be the Nice, or at least,
the Mentone of the country. But revolutions started erupt¬
ing again, and in 1911 Don Portfirio fled to Paris with, it is
said, thirty million gold pesos in his pocket : a peso being
half a dollar, nearly half-a-crown. But we need not believe
all that is said, especially by a man’s enemies.

During the subsequent revolutions, Orilla, which had be¬
gun to be a winter paradise for the Americans, lapsed back
into barbarism and broken brickwork. In 1921 a feeble new
start had been made.

The place belonged to a German-Mexican family, who
also owned the adjacent hacienda. They acquired the pro¬
perty from the American Hotel Company, who had under¬
taken to develop the lake-shore, and who had gone bank¬
rupt during the various revolutions.

The German-Mexican owners were not popular with the
natives. An angel from heaven would not have been popu¬
lar, these years, if he had been known as the owner of pro¬
perty. However, in 1921 the hotel was very modestly
opened again, with an American manager.

Towards the end of the year, Jose, son of the German-
Mexican owner, came to stay with his wife and children in
the hotel, in the new wing. Jose was a bit of a fool, as most
foreigners are, after the first generation in Mexico. Having
business to settle, he went into Guadalajara to the bank and
returned with a thousand gold pesos in a bag, keeping the
matter, as he thought, a dead secret.

Everyone had just gone to bed, on a brilliant moonlight
night in winter, when two men appeared in the yard calling
for Jose : they had to speak to him. Jose, suspecting noth¬
ing, left his wife and two children, and went down. In a
moment he called for the American manager. The manager,
thinking it was some bargaining to be done, also came down.
As he came out of the door, two men seized him by the arms,
and said : “ Don’t make a noise ! ”

“ What’s amiss ? ” said Bell, who had built up Orilla,
and had been twenty years on the lake.

106

THE MOVE DOWN THE LAKE

107

Then he noticed that two other men had hold of Jose.
“ Come,” they said.

There were five Mexicans—Indians, or half-Indians—and
the two captives. They went, the captives in slippers and
shirt-sleeves, to the little office away at the end of the other
part of the hotel, which had been the old ranch-house.

“ What do you want,” said Bell.

“ Give us the money,” said the bandits.

“ Oh, all right,” said the American. There were a few
pesos only in the safe. He opened, showed them, and they
took the money.

“ Now give us the rest,” they said.

“ There is no more,” said the manager, in all sincerity;
for Jose had not confessed to the thousand pesos.

The five peons then began to search the poor little office.
They found a pile of red blankets—which they appropriated
—and a few bottles of red win£—which they drank.

“ Now,” they said, “ give us the money.’”

“ I can’t give you what there isn’t to give,” said the
manager.

“ Good ! ” they said, and pulled out the hideous machetes,
the heavy knives of the Mexicans.

Jos6, intimidated, produced the suit-case with the
thousand pesos. The money was wrapped up in the corner
of a blanket.

“ Now, come with us,” said the bandits.

“ Where to ? ” asked the manager, beginning at last to be
scared.

“ Only out on to the hill, where we will leave you, so that
you cannot telephone to Ixtlahuacan before we have time to
get away,” said the Indians.

Outside, in the bright moon, the air was chill. The Ameri¬
can shivered, in his trousers and shirt and a pair of bed¬
room slippers.

“ Let me take a coat,” he said.

‘Take a blanket,” said the tall Indian.

He took a blanket, and with two men holding his arms, he
ouowed Jos6, who was likewise held captive, out of the
i.. fl e across the dust of the road, and up the steep

i tie round hill on which the organ cactus thrust up their

lWM. ter rni UmpS ’ Uke bunches of cruel fingers, in the moon-
«gat. The hill was stony and steep, the going, slow. Jose,

108

THE PLUMED SERPENT

a fat young man of twenty-eight, protested in the feeble
manner of the well-to-do Mexicans.

At last they came to the top of the hill. Three men took
Jose apart, leaving Bell alone near a cactus clump. The
moon shone in a perfect Mexican heaven. Below, the big
lake glimmered faintly, stretching its length towards the
west. The air was so clear, the mountains across, thirty
miles away, stood sharp and still in the moonlight. And not
a sound nor a motion anywhere ! At the foot of the hill
was the hacienda, witji the peons asleep in their huts. But
what help was there in them ?

Jose and the three men had gone behind a cactus tree that
stuck up straight like a great black bundle of poles, poised on
one central foot, and cast a sharp, iron shadow. The Ameri¬
can could hear the voices, talking low and rapidly, but
could not distinguish the words. His two guards drew away
from him a little, to hear wlffct the others were saying, be¬
hind the cactus.

And the American, who knew the ground he stood on and
the sky that hung over him, felt again the black vibration
of death in the air, the black thrill of the death-lust. Un-
mistakeable he felt it seething in the air, as any man may
feel it, in Mexico. And the strange aboriginal fiendishness,
awake now in the five bandits, communicated itself to his
blood.

Loosening his blanket, he listened tensely in the moon¬
light. And came the thud! thud! thud! of a machete strik¬
ing with lust in a human body, then the strange voice of
Jose: “ Perdoneme!—Forgive me!” the murdered man
cried as he fell.

The American waited for no more. Dropping his blanket,
he jumped for the cactus cover, and stooping, took the down-
slope like a rabbit. The pistol-shots rang out after him, but
the Mexicans don’t as a rule take good aim. His bedroom
slippers flew off, and barefoot, the man, thin and light,
sped down over the stones and the cactus, down to the
hotel.

When he got down, he found everyone in the hotel awake
and shouting.

“ They are killing Jose ! ” he said, and he rushed to the
telephone, expecting every moment the five bandits would
be on him.

109

THE MOVE DOWN THE LAKE

The telephone was in the old ranch-building, in the dining¬
room. There was no answer—no answer—no answer. In
her little bedroom over the kitchen, the cook-woman, the
traitress, was yelling. Across in the new wing, a little dis¬
tance away, Josh’s Mexican wife was screaming. One of the
servant boys appeared.

“ Try and get the police in Ixtlahuacan, said the Ameri¬
can, and he ran to the new wing, to get his gun and to barri¬
cade the doors. His daughter, a motherless girl, was crying
with Jose’s wife.

There was no answer on the telephone. At dawn, the
cook, who said the bandits would not hurt a woman, went
across to the hacienda to fetch the peons. And when the
sun rose, a man was sent for the police.

They found the body of Josd, pierced with fourteen holes.
The American was carried to Ixtlahuacan, and kept in bed,
having cactus spines dug out of his feet by two native
women.

The bandits fled across the marshes. Months later, they
were identified by the stolen blankets, away in Michoacan;
and, pursued, one of them betrayed the others.

After this, the hotel was closed again, and had been re¬
opened only three months, when Kate arrived.

But Villiers came with another story. Last year the peons
had murdered the manager of one of the estates across the
lake. They had stripped him and left him naked on his
back, with his sexual organs cut off and put into his mouth,
his nose slit and pinned back, the two halves, to his cheeks,
with long cactus spines.
u Tell me no more 1 ” said Kate.

She felt there was doom written on the very sky, doom and
horror.

She wrote to Don Ram6n in Sayula, saying she wanted to
go back to Europe. True, she herself had seen no horrors,
apart from the bull-fight. And she had had some exquisite
moments, as coming to this hotel in the boat. The natives
had a certain mystery and beauty, to her. But she could
not bear the unease, and the latest sense of horror.

True, the peons were poor. They used to work for twenty
cents, American, a day; and now the standard price was
fifty cents, or one peso. But then in the old days they re¬
ceived their wage all the year round. Now, only at harvest

110

THE PLUMED SERPENT

time or sowing time. No work, no pay. And in the long dry
season, it was mostly no work.

“ Still,” said the German manager of the hotel, a man who
had run a rubber plantation in Tabasco, a sugar plantation
in the state of V era Cruz, and a hacienda growing wheat,
maize, oranges, in Jalisco : “ Still, it isn’t a question of
money with the peons. It doesn’t start with the peons. It
starts in Mexico City, with a lot of malcontents who want
to put their spoke in the wheel, and who lay hold of pious
catchwords, to catch the poor. There’s no more in it than
that. Then the agitators go round and infect the peons.
It is nothing but a sort of infectious disease, like syphilis, all
this revolution and socialism.”

” But why does no one oppose it,” said Kate. “ Why
don’t the hacendados put up a fight, instead of caving in and
running away.”

“ The Mexican hacendado ! ” The man’s German eyes
gave out a spark. “ The Mexican gentleman is such a brave
man, that while the soldier is violating his wife on the bed,
he is hiding under the bed and holding his breath so they
shan’t find him. He’s as brave as that.”

Kate looked away uncomfortably.

“ They all want the United States to intervene. They
hate the Americans; but they want the United States to in¬
tervene, to save them their money and their property. That’s
how brave they are ! They hate the Americans personally,
but they love them because they can look after money and
property. So they want the United States to annex Mexico,
the beloved patria; leaving the marvellous green and white
and red flag, and the eagle with the snake in its claws, for
the sake of appearances and honour! They’re simply bottled
full of honour; of that sort.”

Always the same violence of bitterness, Kate thought to
herself. And she was so weary of it. How, how weary she
was of politics, of the very words “ Labour ” and “ Social¬
ism! ” and all that sort! It suffocated her.

“ Have you heard of the men of Quetzalcoatl ? ” asked
Kate.

“ Quetzalcoatl ! ” exclaimed the manager, giving a little
click of the final ‘ 1,’ in a peculiar native fashion. “ That’s
another try-on of the Bolshevists. They thought socialism
needed a god, so they’re going to fish him out of this lake.

Ill

the move down the lake

He’ll do for another pious catchword in another revolution-’
The man went away, unable to stand any more.

“ Oh dear 1 ” thought Kate. “ It really is hard to bear.

But she wanted to hear more of Quetzalcoatl.

“ Did you know,” she said to the man later, showing him
the little pot, “ that they find those things in the lake? ”

“ They’re common enough 1 ” he said. “ They used to
throw them in, in the idolatrous days. May still do so, for
what I know. Then get them out again to sell to tourists.

“ They call them ollitas of Quetzalcoatl.”

“ That’s a new invention.”

“ Why, do you think ? ” .

“ They’re trying to start a new thing, that’s all. They’ve
got this society on the lake here, of the Men of Quetzalcoatl,
and they go round singing songs. It’s another dodge for
national-socialism, that’s all.”

“ What do they do, the Men of Quetzalcoatl ? ”

“ I can’t see they do anything, except talk and get excited
over their own importance.”

“ But what’s the idea ? ” '

“ I couldn’t say. Don’t suppose they have any. But if
they have, they won’t let on to you. You’re a gringo—or a
gringita, at the best. And this is for pure Mexicans. For
los senores, the workmen, and los caballeros, the peons.
Every peon is a caballero nowadays, and every workman is
a senor. So I suppose they’re going to get themselves a
special god, to put the final feather in their caps.”

“ Where did it start, the Quetzalcoatl thing ? ”

“ Down in Sayula. They say Don Ramon Carrasco is at
the back of it. Maybe he wants to be the next President—or
maybe he’s aiming higher, and wants to be the first Mexican
Pharoah.”

Ah, how tired it made Kate feel; the hopelessness, the
ugliness, the cynicism, the emptiness. She felt she could
cry aloud, for the unknown gods to put the magic back into
her life, and to save her from the dry-rot of the world’s
sterility.

She thought again of going back to Europe. But what was
the good ? She knew it! It was all politics or jazzing or
slushy mysticism or sordid spiritualism. And the magic had
gone. The younger generation, so smart and interesting ,
but bo without any mystery, any background. The younger

112

THE PLUMED SERPENT

the generation, the flatter and more jazzy, more and more
devoid of wonder.

Nc, she could not go back to Europe.

And no ! She refused to take the hotel manager’s esti¬
mate of Quetzalcoatl. How should a hotel manager judge ?
—even if he was not really an hotel manager, but a ranch-
overseer. She had seen Ramon Carrasco, and Cipriano.
And they were men. They wanted something beyond. She
would believe in them. Anything, anything rather than this
sterility of nothingness which was the world, and into which
her life was drifting.

She would send Villiers away, too. He was nice, she liked
him. But he,too, was widdershins, unwinding the sensations
of disintegration and anti-life. No, she must send him away.
She must, she must free herself from these mechanical con¬
nections.

Every one of them, like Villiers, was like a cog-wheel in
contact with which all one’s workings were reversed. Every¬
thing he said, everything he did, reversed her real life flow,
made her go against the sun.

And she did not want to go against the sun. After all,
in spite of the horrors latent in Mexico, when you got these
dark-faced people away from wrong contacts like agitators
and socialism, they made one feel that life was vast, if fear¬
some, and death was fathomless.

Horrors might burst out of them. But something must
burst out, sometimes, if men are not machines.

No! no! no! no! no! she cried to her own soul. Let me
still believe in some human contact. Let it not be all cut
o(j for me!

But she made up her mind, to be alone, and to cut herself
off from all the mechanical widdershin contacts. Villiers
must go back to his United States. She would be alone in
her own milieu. Not to be touched by any, any of the
mechanical cog-wheel people. To be left alone, not to be
touched. To hide, and be hidden, and never really be
spoken to.

Yet at the same time, with her blood flowing softly sun¬
wise, to let the sunwise sympathy of unknown people steal
in to her. To shut doors of iron against the mechanical
world. But to let the sunwise world steal across to her, and
add its motion to her, the motion of the stress of life, with

THE MOVE DOWN THE LAKE 113

the big sun and the stars like a tree holding out its

l6ftVCS •

She wanted an old Spanish house, with its inner patio oi
flowers and water. Turned inwards, to the few flowers
walled in by shadow. To turn one’s back on the cog-wheel
world. Not to look out any more on to that horrible machine
of the world. To look at one’s own quiet little fountain and
one’s own little orange trees, with only heaven above.

So, having soothed her heart, she wrote Don Ramon
again, that she was coming to Sayula to look for a house.
She sent Villiers away. And the next day she set off with
a man-servant, in the old motor-boat of the hotel, down t.o
the village of Sayula.

It was thirty-five miles to travel, down the long lake. But
the moment she set off, she felt at peace. A tall dark-faced
fellow sat in the stern of the boat, steering and attending
to the motor. She sat on cushions in the middle. And the
young man-servant perched in the prow.

They started before sunrise, when the lake was bathed in
motionless light. Odd tufts of water-hyacinth were travel¬
ling on the soft spermy water, holding up a green leaf like
a little sail of a boat, and nodding a delicate, mauve blue
flower.

Give me the mystery and let the world live again for me !
Kate cried to her own soul. And deliver me from man's
automatism.

The sun rose, and a whiteness of light played on the tops
of the mountains. The boat hugged the north shore, turn¬
ing the promontory on which the villas had started so
jauntily, twenty years ago, but now were lapsing back to
wilderness. All was still and motionless in the light. Some¬
times, on the little bare patches high up on the dry hills were
white specks; birds? No, men in their white cotton, peons
hoeing.. They were so tiny and so distinct, the^ looked like
white birds settled.

Round the bend were the hot springs, the church, the
inaccessible village of the pure Indians, who spoke no Span-
™ There were some green trees, under the precipitous,
dry mountain-side.

So on and on, the motor-boat chugging incessantly, the
k° ws coiled up like a serpent, watching; the fish-
nnlk water gleaming and throwing off a dense' light, so that

114

THE PLUMED SERPENT

the mountains away across were fused out. And Kate, under
the awning, went into a kind of sleep.

They were passing the island, with its ruins of fortress and
prison. It was all rock and dryness, with great broken walls
and the shell of a church among its hurtful stones and its
dry grey herbage. For a long time the Indians had defended
it against the Spaniards. Then the Spaniards used the
island as a fortress against the Indians. Later, as a penal
settlement. And now the place was a ruin, repcllant, full
of scorpions, and otherwise empty of life. Only one or two
fishermen lived in the tiny cove facing the mainland, and a
flock of goats, specks of life creeping among the rocks. And
an unhappy fellow put there by the Government to register
the weather.

No, Kate did not want to land. The place looked too
sinister. She took food from the basket, and ate a little
lunch, and dozed.

In this country, she was afraid. But it was her soul more
than her body that knew fear. She had realised, for the
first time, with finality and fatality, what was the illusion
she laboured under. She had thought that each individual
had a complete self, a complete soul, an accomplished I.
And now she realised as plainly as if she had turned into a
new being, that this was not so. Men and women had in¬
complete selves, made up of bits assembled together loosely
and somewhat haphazard. Man was not created ready¬
made. Men to-day were half-made, and women were half-
made. Creatures that existed and functioned with certain
regularity, but which ran off into a hopeless jumble of incon¬
sequence.

Half-made, like insects that can run fast and be so busy
and suddenly grow wings, but which are only winged grubs
after all. A world full of half-made creatures on two legs,
eating food^and degrading the one mystery left to them,
sex. Spinning a great lot of words, burying themselves in¬
side the cocoons of words and ideas that they spin round
themselves, and inside the cocoons, mostly perishing inert
and overwhelmed.

Half-made creatures, rarely more than half-responsible
and half-accountable, acting in terrible swarms, like locusts.

Awful thought! And with a collective insect-like will,
to avoid the responsibility of achieving any more perfected

THE MOVE DOWN THE LAKE

115

being or identity. The queer, rabid hate of being urged on
into purer self. The morbid fanaticism of the non-integrate.

In the great seething light of the lake, with the terrible
blue-ribbed mountains of Mexico beyond, she seemed
swallowed by some grisly skeleton, in the cage of his death-
anatomy. She was afraid, mystically, of the man crouching
there in the bows with his smooth thighs and supple loins
like a snake, and his black eyes watching. A half-being,
with a will to disintegration and death. And the tall man
behind her at the tiller, he had the curious smoke-grey phos¬
phorus eyes under black lashes, sometimes met among the
Indians. Handsome, he was, and quiet and seemingly self-
contained. But with that peculiar devilish half-smile lurk¬
ing under his face, the half jeering look of a part-thing, which
knows its power to destroy the purer thing.

And yet, Kate told herself, both these men were manly
fellows. They would not molest her, unless she communi¬
cated the thought to them, and by a certain cowardliness,
prompted them. Their souls were nascent, there was no
fixed evil in them, they could sway both ways.

So in her soul she cried aloud to the greater mystery, the
higher power that hovered in the interstices of the hot air,
rich and potent. It was as if she could lift her hands and
clutch the silent, stormless potency that roved everywhere,
waiting. “ Come then ! ” she said, drawing a long slow
breath, and addressing the silent life-breath which hung
unrevealed in the atmosphere, waiting.

And as the boat ran on, and her fingers rustled in the
warm water of the lake, she felt the fulness descend into her
once more, the peace, and the power. The fulfilment filling
her soul like the fulness of ripe grapes. And she thought to
herself : “ Ah, how wrong I have been, not to turn sooner
to the other presence, not to take the life-breath sooner !

Wr ? n £ to be afraid of these two men.”

She did what she had been half-afraid to do before; she
ottered them the oranges and sandwiches still in the basket.

the men looked at her, the smoke-grey eyes

ev« A 61 / 1 , J he eyes ’ and the black eyes looked her in the
y !\ the man with the smoke-grey eyes, who was

aanmger than the other man, but also prouder, said to her
^th his eyes : We are living! I know your sex , and you
ow> mine. The mystery we are glad not to meddle with.

116

THE PLUMED SERPENT

You leave me my natural honour , and I thank you for the
grace.

In his look; so quick and proud, and in his quiet Muchas
grazias! she heard the touch of male recognition, a man
glad to retain his honour, and to feel the communion of
grace. Perhaps it was the Spanish word Grazias! But in
her soul she was thinking of the communion of grace.

With the black-eyed man it was the same. He was
humbler. But as he peeled his orange and dropped the
yellow peel on the water, she could see the stillness, the
humility, and the pathos of grace in him; something very
beautiful and truly male, and very hard to find in a civilised
white man. It was not of the spirit. It was of the dark,
strong, unbroken blood, the flowering of the soul.

Then she thought to herself : After all, it is good to be here.
It is very good to be in this boat on this lake with these two
silent, semi-barbarous men. They can receive the gift of
grace, and we can share it like a communion, they and I.
I am very glad to be here. It is so much better than love :
the love I knew with Joachim. This is the fullness of the vine.

“ Sayula ! ” said the man in the bows, pointing ahead.

She saw, away off, a place where there were green trees,
where the shore was flat, and a biggish building stood out.

“ What is the building? ” she asked.

“ The railway station.”

She was suitably impressed, for it was a new-looking im¬
posing structure.

A little steamer was smoking, lying off from a wooden
jetty in the loneliness, and black, laden boats were poling out
to her, and merging back to shore. The vessel gave a hoot,
and slowly yet busily set off on the bosom of the water,
heading irr a slanting line across the lake, to where the tiny
high white twin-towers of Tuliapan showed above the water¬
line, tiny and far-off, on the other side.

They had passed the jetty, and rounding the shoal where
the willows grew, she could see Sayula; white fluted twin-
towers of the church, obelisk shaped above the pepper trees ;
beyond, a mound of a hill standing alone, dotted with dry
bushes, distinct and Japanese looking; beyond this, the
corrugated, blue-ribbed, flat-flanked mountains of Mexico.

It looked peaceful, delicate, almost Japanese. As she
drew nearer she saw the beach with the washing spread on

THE MOVE DOWN THE LAKE

117

the sand; the fleecy green willow trees and pepper-trees, and
the villas in foliage and flowers, hanging magenta curtains
of bougainvillea, red dots of hibiscus, , pink abundance of
tall oleander trees; occasional palm-trees sticking out.

The boat was steering round a stone jetty, on which, in
black letters, was painted an advertisement for motor-car
tyres. There were a few seats, some deep fleecy trees grow¬
ing out of the sand, a booth for selling drinks, a little prom¬
enade, and white boats on a sandy beach. A few women
sitting under parasols, a few bathers in the water, and trees
in front of the few villas deep in green or blazing scarlet
blossoms.

“ This is very good,” thought Kate. “ It is not too
savage, and not over civilised. It isn’t broken, but it is
rather out of repair. It is in contact with the world, but the
world has got a very weak grip on it.”

She went to the hotel, as Don Ram6n had advised her.

“ Do you come from Orilla? You are Mrs Leslie? Don
Ram6n Carrasco sent us a letter about you.”

There was a house. Kate paid her boatmen and shook
hands with them. She was sorry to be cut off from them
again. And they looked at her with a touch of regret as they
left. She said to herself :

“ There is something rich and alive in these people. They
want to be able to breathe the Great Breath. They are like
children, helpless. And then they’re like demons. But
somewhere, I believe, they want the breath of life and the
communion of the brave, more than anything.”

■She was surprised at herself, suddenly using this language.
But her weariness and her sense of devastation had been so
complete, that the Other Breath in the air, and the bluish
dark power in the earth had become, almost suddenly, more
real to her than so-called reality. Concrete, jarring, exas¬
perating reality had melted away, and a soft world of
potency stood in its place, the velvety dark flux from the
earth, the delicate yet supreme life-breath in the inner air.
Behind the fierce sun the dark eyes of a deeper sun were
watching, and between the bluish ribs of the mountains a
powerful heart was secretly beating, the heart of the earth.*’

Her house was what she wanted; a low L-shaped, tiled

uuding with rough red floors and deep verandah, and the
other two sides of the patio completed by the thick, dark

118

THE PLUMED SERPENT

little mango-forest outside the low wall. The square of the
patio, within the precincts of the house and the mango trees,
was gay with oleanders and hibiscus, and there was a basin
of water in the seedy grass. The flower-pots along the
verandah were full of flowering geranium and foreign
flowers. At the far end of the patio, the chickens were
scratching under the silent motionlessness of ragged banana
trees.

There she had it; her stone, cool, dark house, every room
opening on to the verandah; her deep, shady verandah,
or piazza, or corridor, looking out to the brilliant sun, the
sparkling flowers and the seed-grass, the still water and the
yellowing banana trees, the dark splendour of the shadow-
dense mango trees.

With the house went a Mexican Juana with two thick¬
haired daughters and one son. This family lived in a den at
the back of the projecting bay of the dining-room. There,
half screened, was the well and the toilet, and a little kitchen
and a sleeping room where the family slept on mats on the
floor. There the paltry chickens paddled, and the banana
trees made a chitter as the wind came.

Kate had four bedrooms to choose from. She chose the
one whose low, barred window opened on the rough, grass
and cobble-stone street, closed her doors and windows, and
went to sleep, saying to herself as she lay down : Now I am
alone. And now I have only one thing to do; not to get
caught up into the world’s cog-wheels any more, and not to
lose my hold on the hidden greater thing.

She was tired with a strange weariness, feeling she could
make no further effort. She woke up at tea-time, but there
was no tea. Juana hastened off to the hotel to buy a bit.

Juana was a woman of about forty, rather short, with full
dark face, centreless dark eyes, untidy hair, and a limping
way of walking. She spoke rapidly, a rather plum-in-the-
mouth Spanish, adding “ n ” to all her words. Something of

a sloven, down to her speech.

“ No, Nina, no hay masn ”—masn instead of mas. And
calling Kate, in the old Mexican style, Nina, which means
child. It is the honourable title for a mistress.

Juana was going to be a bit of a trial. She was a widow
of doubtful antecedents, a creature with passion, but not
much control, strong with a certain indifference and loose-

the move down the lake

119

ness. The hotel owner assured Kate that she was honest,
but that if Kate would rather find another criada , all well
and good.

There was a bit of a battle to be fought between the two
women. Juana was obstinate and reckless; she had not
been treated very well by the world. And there was a touch
of bottom-dog insolence about her.

But also, sudden touches of passionate warmth and the
peculiar selfless generosity of the natives. She would be
honest out of rough defiance and indifference, so long as
she was not in a state of antagonism.

As yet, however, she w<ss cautiously watching her ground,
with that black-eyed touch of malice and wariness to be
expected. And Kate felt that the cry: Nina —child! by
which she was addressed, held in it a slight note of male¬
volent mockery.

But there was nothing to do but to go ahead and trust the
dark-faced, centreless woman.

The second day, Kate had the energy to cast out one suite
of bent-wood and cane furniture from her salon, remove
pictures and little stands.

If there is one social instinct more dreary than all the other
social instincts in the world, it is the Mexican. In the centre
of Kate’s red-tiled salon were two crescents : a black bent¬
wood cane settee flanked on each side by two black bent¬
wood cane chairs, exactly facing a brown bent-wood cane
settee flanked on each side by two brown bent-wood cane
chairs. It was as if the two settees and the eight chairs
were occupied by the ghosts of all the Mexican banalties
ever uttered, sitting facing one another with their knees
towards’one another, and their feet on the terrible piece of
green-with-red-roses carpet, in the weary centre of the salon.
The very sight of it was frightening.

Kate shattered this face-to-face symmetry, and had the
two girls, Maria and Concha, assisted by the ironic Juana,
carrying off the brown bent-wood chairs and the bamboo
stands into one of the spare bedrooms. Juana looked on
cynically, and assisted officiously. But when Kate had her
trunk, and fished out a couple of light rugs and a couple of
fine shawls and a few things to make the place human, the
criada began to exclaim :

* Qnc bonita l Que bonita, Nina! Mire que bonita! ”

CHAP : VII. THE PLAZA.

Sayula was a little lake resort; not for the idle rich, for
Mexico has few left; but for tradespeople from Guadalajara,
and week-enders. Even of these, these were few.

Nevertheless, there were two hotels, left over, really, from
the safe quiet days of Don Porfirio, as were most of the
villas. The out-lying villas were shut up, some of them
abandoned. Those in the village lived in a perpetual quake
of fear. There were many terrors, but the two regnant were
bandits and bolshevists.

Bandits are merely men who, in the outlying villages, hav¬
ing very often no money, no work, and no prospects, take
to robbery and murder for a time—occasionally for a life¬
time—as a profession. They live in their wild villages until
troops are sent after them, when they retire into the savage
mountains, or the marshes.

Bolshevists, somehow, seem to be born on the railway.
Wherever the iron rails run, and passengers are hauled back
and forth in railway coaches, there the spirit of rootlessness,
of transitoriness, of first and second class in separate com¬
partments, of envy and malice, and of iron and demonish
panting engines, seems to bring forth the logical children of
materialism, the bolshevists.

Sayula had her little branch of railway, her one train a
day. The railway did not pay, and fought with extinction.
But it was enough.

Sayula also had that real insanity of America, the auto¬
mobile. As men used to -want a horse and a sword, now
they want a car. As women used to pine for a home and a
box at the theatre, now it is a “ machine.” And the poor
follow the middle class. There was a perpetual rush of
“ machines,” motor-cars and motor-buses—called camions
—along the one forlorn road »_oming to Sayula from Guadal-
jara. One hope, one faith, one destiny; to ride in a camion,
to own a car.

There was a little bandit scare when Kate arrived in the
village, but she did not pay much heed. At evening she
went into the plaza, to be with the people. The plaza was a
square with big trees and a disused bandstand in the centre,

120

THE PLAZA

121

a little promenade all round, and then the cobbled streets
where the donkeys and the camions passed. There was a
further little section of real market-place, on the north
side.

The band played n^ more in Sayula, and the elegancia
strolled no more on the inner pavement around the plaza,
under the trees. But the pavement was still good, and the
benches were still more-or-less sound. Oh Don Porfirio’s
day 1 And now it was the peons and Indians, in their
blankets and white clothes, who filled the benches and mono¬
polised the square. True, the law persisted that the peons
must wear trousers in the plaza, and not the loose great
floppy drawers of the fields. But then the peons also wanted
to wear trousers, instead of the drawers that were the garb
of their humble labour.

The plaza now belonged to the peons. They sat thick on
the benches, or slowly strolled round in their sandals and
blankets. Across the cobbled road on the north side, the
little booths selling soup and hot food were crowded with
men, after six o’clock; it was cheaper to eat out, at the end
of a day’s work. The women at home could eat tortillas,
never mind the caldo, the soup or the meat mess. At the
booths which sold tequila, men, women, and boys sat on the
benches with their elbows on the board. There was a mild
gambling game, where the man in the centre turned the
cards, and the plaza rang to his voice : Cinco de Spadas!
Rey de Copas! A large, stout, imperturbable woman, with
a cigarette on her lip and danger in her lowering black eye,
sat on into the night, selling tequila. The sweet-meat man
stood by his board and sold sweets at one centavo each.
And down on the pavement, small tin torch-lamps flared
upon tiny heaps of mangoes or nauseous tropical red plums,
two or three centavos the little heap, while the vendor, a
• woman in the full wave of her skirt, or a man with curious
patient humility, squatted waiting for a purchaser, with that
strange fatal indifference and that gentle sort of patience so
puzzling to a stranger. To have thirty cents’ worth of little
re d plums to sell; to pile them on the pavement in tiny
pyramids, five in a pyramid; and to wait all day and on into
the night, squatting on the pavement and looking up from
the feet to the far-off face of the passer-by and potential
purchaser, this, apparently, is an occupation and a living.

122

THE PLUMED SERPENT

At night by the flare of the tin torch, blowing its flame on
the wind.

Usually there would be a couple of smallish young men
with guitars of different sizes, standing close up facing one
another like two fighting cocks that are uttering a long, end¬
less swansong, singing in tense subdued voices the eternal
ballads, not very musical, mournful, endless, intense, audible
only within close range; keeping on and on till their throats
were scraped. And a few tall, dark men in red blankets
standing around, listening casually, and rarely, very rarely
making a contribution of one centavo.

In among the food booths would be another trio, this time
two guitars and a fiddle, and two of the musicians blind; the
blind ones singing at a high pitch, full speed, yet not very
audible. The very singing seemed secretive, the singers
pressing close in, face to face, as if to keep the wild, melan¬
choly ballad re-echoing in their private breasts, their backs
to the world.

And the whole village was in the plaza, it was like a camp,
with the low, rapid sound of voices. Rarely, very rarely a
voice rose above the deep murmur of the men, the musical
ripple of the women, the twitter of children. Rarely any
quick movement; the slow promenade of men in sandals, the
sandals, called huaraches, making a slight cockroach shuffle
on the pavement. Sometimes, darting among the trees,
bare-legged boys went sky-larking in and out of the shadow,
in and out of the quiet people. They were the irrepressible
boot-blacks, who swarm like tiresome flies in a barefooted
country.

At the south end of the plaza, just across from the trees
and cornerwise to the hotel, was a struggling attempt at an
out-door cafe, with little tables and chairs on the pavement.
Here, on week days, the few who dared flaunt their prestige
would sit and drink a beer or a glass of tequila. They were
mostly strangers. And the peons, sitting immobile on the
seats in the background, looked on with basilisk eyes from
under the great hats.

But on Saturdays and Sundays there was something of a
show. Then the camions and motor-cars came in lurching
and hissing. And, like strange birds alighting, you had slim
and charming girls in organdie frocks and face powder and
bobbed hair, fluttering into the plaza. There they strolled.

THE PLAZA

123

arm in arm, brilliant in red organdie and blue chiffon and
white muslin and pink and mauve and tangerine frail stuffs,
their black hair bobbed out, their dark slim arms interlaced,
their dark faces curiously macabre in the heavy make-up;
approximating to white, but the white of a clown or a

corpse.

in a world of big, handsome peon men, these flappers
flapped with butterfly brightness and an incongruous shrill¬
ness, manless. The supply of fifis, the male young elegants
who are supposed to equate the flappers, was small. But
still, fifis there were, in white flannel trousers and white
shoes, dark jackets, correct straw hats, and canes. Fifis far
more ladylike than the reckless flappers; and far more nerv¬
ous, wincing. But fifis none the less, gallant, smoking a
cigarette with an elegant flourish, talking elegant Castilian,
as near as possible, and looking as if they were going to be
sacrificed to some Mexican god within a twelvemonth; when
they were properly plumped and perfumed. The sacrificial
calves being fattened.

On Saturday, the fifis and the flappers and the motor-car
people from town—only a forlorn few, after all—tried to be
butterfly-gay, in sinister Mexico. They hired the musicians
with guitars and fiddle, and the jazz music began to quaver,
a little too tenderly, without enough kick.

And on the pavement under the trees of the alameda—
under the trees of the plaza, just near the little tables and
chairs of the cafe, the young couples began to gyrate d la
mode. The red and the pink and the yellow and the blue
organdie frocks were turning sharply with all the white
flannel trousers available, and some of the white fltfnnel
trousers'had smart shoes, white with black strappings or
with tan brogue bands. And some of the organdie frocks
had green legs and green feet, some had legs a la nature ,
and white feet. And the slim, dark arms went around the
dark blue fifi shoulders—or dark blue with a white thread.
And the immeasurably soft faces of the males would smile
with a self-conscious fatherliness at the whitened, pretty,
reckless little faces of the females; soft, fatherly, sensuous
smiles, suggestive of a victim’s luxuriousness.

But they were dancing on the pavement of the plaza, and
on this pavement the peons were slowly strolling, or standing
111 groups watching with black, inscrutable eyes the uncanny

124

THE PLUMED SERPENT

butterfly twitching of the dancers. Who knows what they
thought?—whether they felt any admiration and envy at
all, or only just a silent, cold, dark-faced opposition. Oppo¬
sition there was.

The young peons in their little white blouses, and the
scarlet serape folded jauntily on one shoulder, strolled slowly
on under their big, heavy, poised hats, with a will to ignore
the dancers. Slowly, with a heavy, calm balance, they
moved irresistibly through the dance, as if the dance did not
exist. And the fifis in white trousers, with organdie in their
arms, steered as best they might, to avoid the heavy relent¬
less passage of the young peons, who went on talking to one
another, smiling and flashing powerful white teeth, in a
black, heavy sang-froid that settled like a blight even on
the music. The dancers and the passing peons never
touched, never jostled. In Mexico you do not run into
people accidentally. But the dance broke against the in¬
visible opposition.

The Indians on the seats, they too watched the dancers
for a while. Then they turned against them the heavy
negation of indifference, like a stone on the spirit. The
mysterious faculty of the Indians, as they sit there, so quiet
and dense, for killing off any ebullient life, for quenching
any light and colourful effervescence.

There was indeed a little native dance-hall. But it was
shut apart within four walls. And the whole rhythm and
meaning was different, heavy, with a touch of violence.
And even there, the dancers were artizans and mechanics or
railway-porters, the half-urban people. No peons at all—or
practically none.

So, before very long, the organdie butterflies and the
flannel-trouser fifis gave in, succumbed, crushed once more
beneath the stone-heavy passivity of resistance in the demon-

ish peons.

The curious, radical opposition of the Indians to the thing
we call the spirit. It is spirit which makes the flapper flap
her organdie wings like a butterfly. It is spirit, which
creases the white flannel trousers of the fifi and makes him
cut his rather pathetic dash. They try to talk the elegancies

and flippancies of the modern spirit.

But down on it all, like a weight of obsidian, comes the
passive negation of the Indian. He understands soul, which

THE PLAZA

125

is of the blood. But spirit, which is superior, and is the
quality of our civilisation, this, in the mass, he darkly and
barbarically repudiates. Not until he becomes an artizan or
connected with machinery does the modern spirit get him.

And perhaps it is this ponderous repudiation of the modern
spirit which makes Mexico what it is.

But perhaps the automobile will make roads even through
the inaccessible soul of the Indian.

Kate was rather sad, seeing the dance swamped. She had
been sitting at a little table, with Juana for dueha, sipping
a glass of absinthe.

The motor-cars returning to town left early, in a little
group. If bandits were out, they had best keep together.
Even the fifis had a pistol on their hips.

But it was Saturday, so some of the young “ elegance ”
was staying on, till the next day; to bathe and flutter in the
sun.

It was Saturday, so the plaza was very full, and along the
cobble streets stretching from the square, many torches
fluttered and wavered upon the ground, illuminating a dark
salesman and an array of straw hats, or a heap of straw mats
called petates, or pyramids of oranges from across the lake.

It was Saturday, and Sunday morning was market. So,
as it were suddenly, the life in the plaza was dense and heavy
with potency. The Indians had come in from all the
villages, and from far across the lake. And with them they
brought the curious heavy potency of life which seems to
hum deeper and deeper when they collect together.

In the afternoon, with the wind from the south, the big
canoas, sailing-boats with black hulls and one huge sail, had
come drifting across the waters, bringing the market-produce
and the natives to their gathering ground. All the white
specks of villages on the far shore, and on the far-off slopes,
had sent their wild quota to the throng.

It was Saturday, and the Indian instinct for living on into
the night, once they are gathered together, was now aroused.
The people did not go home. Though market would begin
at dawn, men had no thought of sleep.

At about nine o’clock, after the fifi dance was shattered,
ttate heard a new sound, the sound of a drum, or tom-tom,
and saw a drift of the peons away to the dark side of the
plaza, where the side market would open to-morrow. Al-

126

THE PLUMED SERPENT

ready places had been taken, and little stalls set up, and
huge egg-shaped baskets, big enough to hold two men, were
lolling against the wall.

There was a rippling and a pulse-like thudding of the
drum, strangely arresting on the night air, then the long note
of a flute playing a sort of wild, unemotional melody, with
the drum for a syncopated rhythm. Kate, who had listened
to the drums and the wild singing of the Red Indians in
Arizona and New Mexico, instantly felt that timeless,
primeval passion of the prehistoric races, with their intense
and complicated religious significance, spreading on the air.

She looked inquiringly at Juana, and Juana’s black eyes
glanced back at her furtively.

“ What is it? ” said Kate.

“ Musicians, singers,” said Juana evasively.

“ But it’s different,” said Kate.

“ Yes, it is new.”

“New?” .

“ Yes, it has only been coming for a short time.

“ Where does it come from ? ”

« Who knows ! ” said Juana, with an evasive shrug of her
shoulders.

“ I want to hear,” said Kate.

“ It’s purely men,” said Juana.

“ still, one can stand a little way off.”

Kate moved towards the dense, silent throng of men in
big hats. They all had their backs to her.

She stood on the step of one of the houses, and saw a little
clearing at the centre of the dense throng of men, under the
stone wall over which bougainvillea and plumbago flowers
were hanging, lit up by the small, brilliantly flaring torches
of sweet-smelling wood, which a boy held in his two hands.

The drum was in the centre of the clearing, the drummer
standing facing the crowd. He was naked from the waist
up, wore snow-white cotton drawers, very full, held round
the waist by a red sash, and bound at the ankles with red
cords. Round his uncovered head was a red cord, witn
three straight scarlet feathers rising from the back of his
head, and on his forehead, a torquoise ornament, a circle of
blue with a round blue stone in the centre. The flute player
was also naked to the waist, but over his shoulder was folded
a fine white sarape with blue-and-dark edges, and fringe.

THE PLAZA

127

Among the crowd, men with naked shoulders were giving
little leaflets to the onlookers. And all the time, high and
pure, the queer clay flute was repeating a savage, rather
difficult melody, and the drum was giving the blood-rhythm.

More and more men were drifting in from the plaza. Kate
stepped from her perch and went rather shyly forward. She
wanted one of the papers. The man gave her one without
looking at her. And she went into the light to read. It was
a sort of ballad, but without rhyme, in Spanish. At the top
of the leaflet was a rough print of an eagle within the ring
of a serpent that had its tail in its mouth; a curious devia¬
tion from the Mexican emblem, which is an eagle standing
on a nopal, a cactus with great flat leaves, and holding in
its beak and claws a writhing snake.

This eagle stood slim upon the serpent, within the circle
of the snake, that had black markings round its back, like
short black rays pointing inwards. At a little distance, the
emblem suggested an eye.

“ In the place of the west

In peace, beyond the lashing of the sun’s bright tail,
Tu the stillness where waters are born
Slept I, Quetzalcoatl.

In the cave which is called Dark Eye,

Behind the sun, looking through him as a window
Is the place. There the waters rise,

There the winds are born.

On the waters of the after-life

I rose again, to see a star falling, and feci a breath
on my face.

The breath said : Go ! And lo 1
I am coming.

The star that was*falling was fading, was dying.

I heard the star singing like a dying bird;

My name is Jesus , 1 am Mary’s Son .

I am coming home.

My mother the Moon is dark.

Oh brother f Quetzalcoatl
Hold back the dragon of the sun.

Bind him with shadow while I past
Homewards. Let me come home.

128

THE PLUMED SERPENT

I bound the bright fangs of the Sun
And held him while Jesus passed
Into the lidless shade,

Into the eye of the Father,

Into the womb of refreshment.

And the breath blew upon me again.
So I took the sandals of the Saviour
And started down the long slope
Past the mount of the sun.

Till I saw beneath me
White breast-tips of my Mexico
My bride.

Jesus the Crucified
Sleeps in the healing water*

The long sleep.

Sleep, sleep, my brother, sleep.

My bride between the seas
Is combing her dark hair,

Saying to herself : Quetzalcoatl.”

There was a dense throng of men gathered now, and from
the centre, the ruddy glow of ocote torches rose warm and
strong, and the sweet scent of the cedar-like resin was on the
air Kate could see nothing, for the mass of men in big

The flute had stopped its piping, and the drum was beat¬
ing a slow, regular thud, acting straight on the blood. The
incomprehensible hollow barking of the drum was like a
spell on the mind, making the heart burst each stroke, and

darkening the will. . _ _ , .

The men in the crowd began to subside, sitting and squat-

ting on the ground, with their hats between their knees.
And now it was a little sea of dark, proud heads leaning a
little forward above the soft, strong male shoulders.

Near the wall was a clear circle, with the drum in the
centre. The drummer with the naked torso stood tilting his
drum towards him, his shoulders gleaming smooth and ruddy
in the flare of light. Beside him stood another man JoM ng
a banner that hung from a light rod. On the blue field of the
banneret was the yellow sun with a black centre, and be¬
tween the four greater yellow rays, four black rays emerg-

THE PLAZA

129

mg, so that the sun looked like a wheel spinning with a
dazzling motion.

The crowd having all sat down, the six men with naked
torsos, who had been giving out the leaflets and ordering the
crowd, now came back and sat down m a ring, of which the
drummer, with the drum tilted between his knees as he
squatted on the ground, was the key. On his right hand sat
the banner-bearer, on his left the flautist. They were nine
men in the ring, the boy, who sat apart watching the two
ocote torches, which he had laid upon a stone supported on
a long cane tripod, being the tenth.

The night seemed to have gone still. The curious seed-
rattling hum of voices that filled the plaza was hushed.
Under the trees, on the pavements, people were still passing
unconcerned, but they looked curiously lonely, isolated
figures drifting in the twilight of the electric lamps, and going
about some exceptional business. They seemed outside the
nucleus of life.

Away on the north side, the booths were still flaring,
people were buying and selling. But this quarter too, looked
lonely, and outside the actual reality, almost like memory.

When the men sat down, the women began to drift up
shyly, and seat themselves on the ground at the outer rim,
their full cotton skirts flowering out around them, and their
hark rebozos drawn tight over their small, round, shy heads,
as they squatted on the ground. Some, too shy to come
nght up lingered on the nearest benches of the plaza. And
some had gone away. Indeed, a good many men and women
nao disappeared as soon as the drum was heard,
bo that the plaza was curiously void. There was the
C 0t °- f P eo P le round the drum, and then the outer
em P fc y and hostile. Only in the dark little
on to the darkness of the lake, people were
ov?r h g - / gh ° StS ’ haU Ut “ u P> the men with their sarapes

from the'shad'ow."" 2 *“* and ^ and concealed '

tin^on^h^ standin S back hi the doorway, with Juana sit-
haJ-nflVw? ^ oorst . e P at her feet, was fascinated by the silent,
black th? me ? m the torchlight. Their heads were

beautv fu ^ > odies t s ° ft and rudd y with the peculiar Indian

The soft*, at , the same time something terrible in it
it, full, handsome torsos of silent men with head*

130

THE PLUMED SERPENT

softly bent a little forward; the soft, easy shoulders, that
are yet so broad, and which balance upon so powerful a
backbone; shoulders drooping a little, with the relaxation
of slumbering, quiescent power; the beautiful ruddy skin,
gleaming with a dark fineness; the strong breasts, so male
and so deep, yet without the muscular hardening that be¬
longs to white men ; and the dark, closed faces, closed upon
a darkened consciousness, the black moustaches and deli¬
cate beards framing the closed silence of the mouth; all this
was strangely impressive, moving strange, frightening emo¬
tions in the soul. Those men who sat there in their dark,
physical tenderness, so still and soft, they looked at the
same time frightening. Something dark, heavy, and rep¬
tilian in their silence and their softness. Their very naked
torsos were clothed with a subtle shadow, a certain secret
obscurity. White men sitting there would have been strong¬
muscled and frank, with an openness in their very physique,
a certain ostensible presence. But not so these men. Their
very nakedness only revealed the soft, heavy depths of their
natural secrecy, their eternal invisibility. They did not
belong to the realm of that which comes forth.

Everybody was quite still; the expectant hush deepened to
a kind of dead, night silence. The naked-shouldered men sat
motionless, sunk into themselves, and listening with the dark
ears of the blood. The red sash went tight round their
waists, the wide white trousers, starched rather stiff, were
bound round the ankles with red cords, and the dark feet in
the glare of the torch looked almost black, in huaraches that
had red thongs. What did they want then, in life, these
men who sat so softly and without any assertion, yet whose
weight was so ponderous, arresting?

Kate was at once attracted and repelled. She was at¬
tracted, almost fascinated by the strange nuclear power of
the men in the circle. It was like a darkly glowing, vivid
nucleus of new life. Rcpellant the strange heaviness, the
sinking of the spirit into the earth, like dark water. Repel-
lant the silent, dense opposition to the pale-faced spiritual

direction. , ...

Yet here and here alone, it seemed to her, life burned with

a deep new fire. The rest of life, as she knew it, seemed
wan, bleached and sterile. The pallid wanness and weariness
of her world ! And here, the dark, ruddy figures in the

THE PLAZA

131

glare of a torch, like the centre of the everlasting fire, surely
this was a new kindling of mankind !

She knew it was so. Yet she preferred to be on the fringe,
sufficiently out of contact. She could not bear to come into
actual contact.

The man with the banner of the sun lifted his face as if
he were going to speak. And yet he did not speak. He was
old; in his sparse beard were grey hairs, grey hairs over his
thick dark mouth. And his face had the peculiar thickness,
with a few deep-scored lines, of the old among these people.
Yet his hair rose vigorous and manly from his forehead, his
body was smooth and strong. Only, perhaps, a little
smoother, heavier, softer than the shoulders of the younger
men.

His black eyes gazed sightless for some time. Perhaps he

was really blind; perhaps it was a heavy abstraction, a sort

of heavy memory working in him, which made his face seem
sightless.

Then he began, in a slow, clear, far-off voice, that seemed
strangely to echo the vanished barking of the drum :

“ Listen to me, men ! Listen to me, women of these
men ! A long time ago, the lake started calling for men, in
the quiet of the night. And there were no men. The little
char ales were swimming round the shore, looking for some-
thmg, and the bdgari and the other big fish would jump out
of^the water, to look around. But there were no men.

So one of the gods with hidden faces walked out of the

water, and climbed the hill—” he pointed with his hand in

the night towards the invisible round hill at the back of the

village— and looked about. He looked up at the sun, and

hrough the sun he saw the dark *un, the same that made

the sun and the world, and will swallow it again like a
draught of water.

th ‘‘? e said , : /s u time? And from behind the bright sun
the f 0U r dark arms of the greater sun shot out, and in the

M * J h u y COuld see the four dark “™ s of the

sun m the sky. And they started walking.

the man on the top of the hill, who was a god, looked at
the mountams and the flat places, and saw men very thirsty

ComVh“I'; eS H aneine ° Ut ' S ° he Said to them 7 : Corned
ihey came like dogs running with their tongues out, and

132

THE PLUMED SERPENT

kneeled on the shore of the lake. And the man on iiu. top
of the hill heard them panting with having drunk much
water. He said to them : Have you drunk too much into
yourselves ? Are your bones not dry enough ?

“ The men made houses on the shore, and the man on the
hill, who was a god, taught them to sow maize and beans,
and build boats. But he said to them : No boat will save
you, when the dark sun ceases to hold out his dark arms
abroad in the sky.

“ The man on the hill said : I am Quetzalcoatl, who
breathed moisture on your dry mouths. I filled your breasts
with breath from beyond the sun. I am the wind that
whirls from the heart of the earth, the little winds that whirl
like snakes round your feet and your legs and your thighs,
lifting up the head of the snake of your body, in whom is
your power. When the snake of your body lifts its head,
beware ! It is I, Quetzalcoatl, rearing up in you, rearing
up and reaching beyond the bright day, to the sun of dark¬
ness beyond, where is your home at last. Save for the dark
sun at the back of the day-sun, save for the four dark arms
in the heavens, you were bone, and the stars were bone, and
the moon an empty sea-shell on a dry beach, and the yellow
sun were an empty cup, like the dry thin bone of a dead
coyote’s head. So beware !

“ Without me you are nothing. Just as I, without the
sun that is back of the sun, am nothing.

“ When the yellow sun is high in the sky, then say : Quet¬
zalcoatl will lift his hand and screen me from this, else I shall
burn out, and the land will wither.

“ For, say I, in the palm of my hand is the water of life,
and on the back of my hand is the shadow of death. And
when men forget me, I lift the back of my hand, farewell !
Farewell, and the shadow of death.

“ But men forgot me. Their bones were moist, their hearts
weak. When the snake of their body lifted its head, they
said : This is the tame snake that does as we wish. And
when they could not bear the fire of the sun, they said : The
sun is angry. He wants to drink us up. Let us give him
blood of victims.

“ And so it was, the dark branches of shade were gone
from heaven, and Quetzalcoatl mourned and grew old, hold¬
ing his hand before his face, to hide his face from men.

THE PLAZA

133

«* He mourned and said : Let me go home. I am old, I am
almost bone. Bone triumphs in me, my heart is a dry

gourd. I am weary in Mexico.

“ So he cried to the Master-Sun, the dark one, of the
unuttered name : I am withering white like a perishing
gourd-vine. I am turning to bone. I am denied of
these Mexicans. I am waste and weary and old. Take

me away.

“ Then the dark sun reached an arm, and lifted Quetzal-
coatl into the sky. And the dark sun beckoned with a
finger, and brought white men out of the east. And they
came with a dead god on the Cross, saying : Lo 1 This is
the Son of God ! He is dead, he is bone ! Lo, your god is
bled and dead, he is bone. Kneel and sorrow for him, and
weep. For your tears he will give you comfort again, from
the dead, and a place among the scentless rose-trees of the
after-life, when you are dead.

“ Lo ! His mother weeps, and the waters of the world are
in her hands. She will give you drink, and heal you, and
lead you to the land of God. In the land of God you shall
weep no more. Beyond the gates of death, when you have
passed from the house of bone, into the garden of white
roses.

“ So the weeping Mother brought her Son who was dead
on the Cross to Mexico, to live in the temples. And the
people looked up no more, saying : The Mother weeps.
The Son of her womb is bone. Let us hope for the place
of the west, where the dead have peace among the scentless
rose-trees, in the Paradise of God.

“ For the priests would say : It is beautiful beyond the
grave.

“ And then the priests grew old, and the tears of the

Mother were exhausted, and the Son on the Cross cried

out to the dark sun far beyond the sun : What is this

that is done to me? Am 1 dead for ever , and only

dead? Am I always and only dead , but bone on a Cross
of bone?

“So this cry was heard in the world, and beyond the stars
of the night, and beyond the sun of the day.

. j. Jesus said again : it time? My Mother is old like a

T 0 ??’ the ? ld ? one °f her can wee P no more. Are
we perished beyond redeemf

134 THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Then the greatest of the great suns spoke aloud from the
back of the sun : I will take my Son to my bosom, I will
take His Mother on my lap. Like a woman I will put them
in My womb, like a mother I will lay them to sleep, in
mercy I will dip them in the bath of forgetting and peace
and renewal.

“ That is all. So hear now, you men, and you women of
these men.

“ Jesus is going heme, to the Father, and Mary is
going back, to sleep in the belly of the Father. And
they both will recover from death, during the long long
sleep.

“ But the Father will not leave us alone. We are not
abandoned.

“ The Father has looked around, and has seen the Morning
Star, fearless between the rush of the oncoming yellow sun,
and the backward reel of the night. So the Great One,
whose name has never been spoken, says : Who art thou,
bright watchman ? And the down-star answering : It is I,
the Morning Star, who in Mexico was Quetzalcoatl. It is
I, who look at the yellow sun from behind, have my eye on
the unseen side of the moon. It is I, the star, midway be¬
tween the darkness and the rolling of the sun. I, called
Quetzalcoatl, waiting in the strength of my days.

** The Father answered : It is well. It is well. And
again : It is time.

“ Thus the big word was spoken behind the back of the
world. The Nameless said : It is time.

“ Once more the word has been spoken : It is time.

“ Listen, men, and the women of men : It is time. Know
now it is time. Those that left us are coming back. Those
that came are leaving again. Say welcome, and then fare¬
well !

“ Welcome ! Farewell ! ”

The old man ended with a strong, suppressed cry, as if

really calling to the gods :

“ Bienvenido ! Bicnvenido ! Adios ! Adios !

Even Juana, seated at Kate’s feet, cried out without

knowing what she did :

“ Bienvenido ! Bienvenido ! Adios ! Adios ! Adios-n !

On the last adios ! she trailed out to a natural human

“ n.”

THE PLAZA

185

The drum began to beat with an insistent, intensive
rhythm, and the flute, or whistle, lifted its odd, far-off calling
voice. It was playing again and again the peculiar melody

Kate had heard at first.

Then one of the men in the circle lifted his voice, and
began to sing the hymn. He sang in the fashion of the Old
Red Indians, with intensity and restraint, singing inwardly,
singing to his own soul, not outward to the world, nor yet
even upward to God, as the Christians sing. But with a sort
of suppressed, tranced intensity, singing to the inner mys¬
tery, singing not into space, but into the other dimension
of man’s existence, where he finds himself in the infinite
room that lies inside the axis of our wheeling space. Space,
like the world, cannot but move. And like the world, there
is an axis. And the axis of our worldly space, when you
enter, is a vastness where even the trees come and go, and
the soul is at home in its own dream, noble and unques¬
tioned.

The strange, inward pulse of the drum, and the singer
singing inwardly, swirled the soul back into the very centre
of time, which is older than age. He began on a high, re¬
mote note, and holding the voice at a distance, ran on in
subtle, running rhythms, apparently unmeasured, yet pulsed
underneath by the drum, and giving throbbing, three-fold
lilts and lurches. For a long time, no melody at all was
recognisable : it was just a lurching, running, far-off crying,
something like the distant faint howling of a coyote. It was
really the music of the old American Indian.

There was no recognisable rhythm, no recognisable emo¬
tion, it was hardly music. Rather a far-off, perfect crying
in the night. But it went straight through to the soul, the
most ancient and everlasting soul of all men, where alone
can the human family assemble in immediate contact.

Kate knew it at once, like a sort of fate. It was no good
resisting. There was neither urge nor effort, nor any speci¬
ality. The sound sounded in the innermost far-off place of
the human core, the ever-present, where there is neither
hope nor emotion, but passion sits with folded wings on the
nest, and faith is a tree of shadow.

Like fate, like doom. Faith is the Tree of Life itself,
inevitable, and the apples are upon us, like the apples of the
eye, the apples of the chin, the apple of the heart, the applei

136

THE PLUMED SERPENT

of the breast, the apple of the belly, with its deep core, the
apples of the loins, the apples of the knees, the little, side-
by-side apples of the toes. What do change and evolution
matter? We are the Tree with the fruit forever upon it.
And we are faith forever. Verbum Sat.

The one singer had finished, and only the drum kept on,
touching the sensitive membrane of the night subtly and
knowingly. Then a voice in the circle rose again on the
song, and like birds flying from a tree, one after the other,
the individual voices arose, till there was a strong, intense,
curiously weighty soaring and sweeping of male voices, like
a dark flock of birds flying and dipping in unison. And all
the dark birds seemed to have launched out of the heart,
in the inner forest of the masculine chest.

And one by one, voices in the crowd broke free, like birds
launching and coming in from a distance, caught by the
spell. The words did not matter. Any verse, any words,
no words, the song remained the same : a strong, deep wind
rushing from the caverns of the breast, from the everlasting
soul ! Kate herself was too shy and wincing to sing : too
blenched with disillusion. But she heard the answer away
back in her soul, like a far-off mocking-bird at night. And
Juana was singing in spite of herself, in a crooning feminine
voice, making up the words unconsciously.

The half-naked men began to reach for their serapes :
white serapes, with borders of blue and earth-brown bars,
and dark fringe. A man rose from the crowd and went
towards the lake. He came back with ocote and with
faggots that a boat had brought over. And he started a
little fire. After a while, another man went for fuel, and
started another fire in the centre of the circle, in front of
the drum. Then one of the women went off soft and bare¬
foot, in her full cotton skirt. And she made a little bonfire
among the women.

The air was bronze with the glow of flame, and sweet with
smoke like incense. The song rose and fell, then died away.
Rose, and died. The drum ebbed on, faintly touching the
dark membrane of the night. Then ebbed away. In the
absolute silence could be heard the soundless stillness of the
ddrk lnkc.

Then the drum started again, with a new, strong pulse.
One of the seated men, in his white poncho with the dark

THE PLAZA

137

blackish-and-blue border, got up, taking off his sandals as
he did so, and began softly to dance the dance step. Mind¬
less, dancing heavily and with a curious bird-like sensitive¬
ness of the feet, he began to tread the earth with his bare
soles, as if treading himself deep into the earth. Alone,
with a curious pendulum rhythm, leaning a little forward
from a powerful backbone, he trod to the drum-beat, his
white knees lifting and lifting alternately against the dark
fringe of his blanket, with a queer dark splash. And another
man put his huaraches into the centre of the ring, near the
fire, and stood up to dance. The man at the drum lifted up
his voice in a wild, blind song. The men were taking off
their ponchos. And soon, with the firelight on their breasts
and on their darkly abstracted faces, they were all afoot,
with bare torsos and bare feet, dancing the savage bird-
tread.

“ Who sleeps shall wake! Who sleeps shall wake! Who
treads down the path of the snake in the dust shall arrive
at the place; in the path of the dust shall arrive at the place
and be dressed in the skin of the snake : shall be dressed in
the skin of the snake of the earth, that is father of stone;
that is father of stone and the timber of earth; of the silver
and gold, of the iron, the timber of earth from the bone of the
father of earth, of the snake of the world, of the heart of the
world, that beats as a snake beats the dust in its motion on
earth, from the heart of the world.

“ Who slee-eeps, sha-all wake ! Who slee-eeps, sha-all
wake ! Who sleeps, sha-11 wake in the way of the snake
of the dust of the earth, of the stone of the earth, of the
bone of the earth.”

The song seemed to take new wild flights, after it had
sunk and rustled to a last ebb. It was like waves that rise
out of the invisible, and rear up into form and a flying, dis¬
appearing whiteness and a rustle of extinction. And the
dancers, after dancing in a circle in a slow, deep absorption,
each man changeless in his own place, treading the same dust
with the soft churning of bare feet, slowly, slowly began to
revolve, till the circle was slowly revolving round the fire,
with always the same soft, down-sinking, churning tread.
And the drum kept the changeless living beat, like a heart,
and the song rose and soared and fell, ebbed and ebbed to a
sort of extinction, then heaved up again.

irt

189

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Till the young peons could stand it no more. They put
off their sandals and their hats and their blankets, and
shyly, with inexpert feet that yet knew the old echo of the
tread, they stood behind the wheeling dancers, and danced
without changing place. Till soon the revolving circle had a
fixed yet throbbing circle of men outside.

Then suddenly one of the naked-shouldered dancers from
the inner circle stepped back into the outer circle and with a
slow leaning, slowly started the outer circle revolving in the
reverse direction from the inner. So now there were two
wheels of the dance, one within the other, and revolving in
different directions.

They kept on and on, with the drum and the song, revolv¬
ing like wheels of shadow-shapes around the fire. Till the
fired died low, and the drum suddenly stopped, and the men
suddenly dispersed, returning to their seats again.

There was silence, then the low hum of voices and the
sound of laughter. Kate had thought, so often, that the
laughter of the peons broke from them in a sound almost
like pain. But now the laughs came like little invisible
flames, suddenly from the embers of the talk.

Everybody was waiting, waiting. Yet nobody moved at
once, when the thud of the drum struck again like a sum¬
mons. They sat still talking, listening with a second con¬
sciousness. Then a man arose and threw off his blanket,
and threw wood on the central fire. Then he walked through
the seated men to where the women clustered in the fullness
of their skirts. There he waited, smiling with a look of
abstraction. Till a girl rose and came with utmost shyness
towards him, holding her rebozo tight over her lowered head
with her right hand, and taking the hand of the man m her
left. It was she who lifted the motionless hand of the man
in her own, shyly, with a sudden shy snatching. He laughed,
and led her through the now risen men, towards the inner
fire. She went with dropped head, hiding her face in con¬
fusion. But side by side and loosely holding hands, they
began to tread the soft, heavy dance-step, forming the first
small segment of the inner, stationary circle.

And now all the men were standing facing outwards, wait¬
ing to be chosen. And the women quickly, their shawled
heads hidden, were slipping in and picking up the loose
right hand of the man of their choice. The inner men with

THE PLAZA

189

the naked shoulders were soon chosen. The inner circle, of
men and women in pairs, hand in hand, was closing.

“ Come, Nina, come 1 ” said Juana, looking up at Kate

with black, gleaming eyes.

“ I am afraid ! ” said Kate. And she spoke the truth.

One of the bare-breasted men had come across the street,
out of the crowd, and was standing waiting, near the door¬
way in which Kate stood, silently, with averted face.

“ Look ! Nina ! This master is waiting for you. Then
come ! Oh Nina, come 1 ”

The voice of the criada had sunk to the low, crooning,
almost magical appeal of the women of the people, and her
black eyes glistened strangely, watching Kate’s face. Kate,
almost mesmerised, took slow, reluctant steps forward, to¬
wards the man who was standing with averted face.

“ Do you mind? ” she said in English, in great confusion.
And she touched his fingers with her own.

His hand, warm and dark and savagely suave, loosely,
almost with indifference, and yet with the soft barbaric near¬
ness, held her fingers, and he led her to the circle. She
dropped her head, and longed to be able to veil her face.
In her white dress and green straw hat, she felt a virgin
again, a young virgin. This was the quality these men had
been able to give back to her.

Shyly, awkwardly, she tried to tread the dance-step. But
in her shoes she felt inflexible, insulated, and the rhythm was
not in her. She moved in confusion.

But the man beside her held her hand in the same light,
soft grasp, and the slow, pulsing pendulum of his body
swayed untrammelled. He took no notice of hex. And yet
he held her fingers in his soft, light touch.

Juana had discarded her boots and stockings, and with
her dark, creased face like a mask of obsidian, her eyes
gleaming with the timeless female flame, dark and unquench¬
able, she was treading the step of the dance.

“ As the bird of the sun, treads the earth at the dawn of
the day like a brown hen under his feet, like a hen and the
branches of her belly dToop with the apples of birth, with
the eggs of gold, with the eggs that hide the globe of the
sun in the waters of heaven, in the purse of the shell of
earth that is white from the fire of the blood, tread the
earth, and the earth will conceive like the hen ’neath the feet

140

THE PLUMED SERPENT

of the bird of the sun; ’neath the feet of the heart, ’neath
the heart’s twin feet. Tread the earth, tread the earth that
squats as a pullet with wings closed in—”

The circle began to shift, and Kate was slowly moving
round between two silent and absorbed men, whose arms
touched her arms. And the one held her fingers softly,
loosely, but with transcendant nearness. And the wild song
rose again like a bird that has alighted for a second, and
the drum changed rhythm incomprehensibly.

The outer wheel was all men. She seemed to feel the
strange dark glow o* them upon her back. Men, dark, col¬
lective men, non-individual. And herself woman, wheeling
upon the great wheel of womanhood.

Men and women alike danced with faces lowered and
expressionless, abstract, gone in the deep absorption of men
into the greater manhood, women into the great woman¬
hood. It was sex, but the greater, not the lesser sex. The
waters over the earth wheeling upon the waters under the
earth, like an eagle silently wheeling above its own shadow.

She felt her sex and her womanhood caught up and identi¬
fied in the slowly revolving ocean of nascent life, the dark
sky of the men lowering and wheeling above. She was not
herself, she was gone, and her own desires were gone in the
ocean of the great desire. As the man whose fingers touched
hers was gone in the ocean that is male, stooping over the
face of the waters.

The slow, vast, soft-touching revolution of the ocean
above upon ocean below, with no vestige of rustling or foam.
Only the pure sliding conjunction. Herself gone into her
greater self, her womanhood consummated in the greater
womanhood. And where her fingers touched the fingers of
the man, the quiet spark, like the dawn-star, shining be¬
tween her and the greater manhood of men.

How strange, to be merged in desire beyond desire, to be
gone in the body beyond the individualism of the body, with
the spark of contact lingering like a morning star between
her and the man, her woman’s greater self, and the greater
self of man. Even of the two men next to her. What a
beautiful slow wheel of dance, two great streams streaming

in contact, in opposite directions.

She did not know the face of the man whose fingers she
held. Her personal eyes had gone blind, his face was the

141

the plaza

face of dark heaven, only the touch of his fingers a star that

was both hers and his. . c .

Her feet were feeling the way into the dance-step. She

was beginning to learn softly to loosen her weight, to loosen
the uplift of all her life, and let it pour slowly, darkly, with
an ebbing gush, rhythmical in soft, rhythmic gushes from
her feet into the dark body of the earth. Erect, strong like
a staff of life, yet to loosen all the sap of her strength and
let it flow down into the roots of the earth.

She had lost count of time. But the dance of itself seemed
to be wheeling to a close, though the rhythm remained
exactly the same to the end.

The voice finished singing, only the drum kept on. Sud-
denly the drum gave a rapid little shudder, and there was
silence. And immediately the hands were loosened, the
dance broke up into fragments. The man gave her a quick,
far-off smile and was gone. She would never know him by
sight. But by presence she might know him.

The women slipped apart, clutching their rebozos tight
round their shoulders. The men hid themselves in their
blankets. And Kate turned to the darkness of the lake.

** Already you are going, Nina? ” came Juana’s voice of
mild, aloof disappointment.

“ I must go now,” said Kate hurriedly.

And she hastened towards the dark of the lake, Juana
running behind her with shoes and stockings in her hand.

Kate wanted to hurry home with her new secret, the
strange secret of her greater womanhood, that she could not
get used to. She would have to sink into this mystery.

She hastened along the uneven path of the edge of the
lake shore, that lay dark in shadow, though the stars gave
enough light to show the dark bulks and masts of the sailing-
canoes against the downy obscurity of the water. Night,
timeless, hourless night! She would not look at her watch.
She would lay her watch face down, to hide its phosphorus
figures. She would not be timed.

And as she sank mto sleep, she could hear the drum again,
like a pulse inside a stone beating.

CHAP : Vm. NIGHT IN THE HOUSE.

Over the gateway of Kate’s house was a big tree called a
cuenta tree, because it dropped its fruits, that were little,
round, hard balls like little dark marbles, perfect in shape,
for the natives to gather up and string for beads, cuentas,
or more particularly, for the Pater Noster beads of the
rosary. At night, the little road outside was quite dark, and
the dropping of the cuentas startled the silence.

The nights, which at first had seemed perfectly friendly,
began to be full of terrors. Fear had risen again. A band
of robbers had gathered in one of the outlying villages on the
lake, a village where the men had bad characters, as being
ready to turn bandit at any moment. And this gang, invisible
in the daytime, consisting during the day of lake fishermen
and labourers on the land, at night would set off on horse¬
back to sack any lonely, or insufficiently-protected house.

Then the fact that a gang of bandits was out always set
the isolated thieves and scoundrels in action. Whatever
happened, it would be attributed to the bandits. And so,
many an unsuspected, seemingly honest man, with the old
lust in his soul, would steal out by night with his machete and
perhaps a pistol, to put his fingers in the pie of the darkness.

And again Kate felt the terror clot and thicken in the
black silence of the Mexican night, till the sound of a cuenta
falling was terrible. She would lie and listen to the thicken¬
ing darkness. A little way off would sound the long, shrill
whistle of the police watch. And in a while, the police
patrol, on horseback, would go clattering lightly by. But
the police in most countries are never present save where
there is no trouble.

The rainy season was coming, and the night-wind rose
from the lake, making strange noises in the trees, and shak¬
ing the many loose doors of the house. The servants were
away in their distant recess. And in Mexico, at night, each
little distance isolates itself absolutely, like p. man in a black
cloak turning his back.

In the morning, Juana would appear from the plaza, her j
eyes blob-like and inky, and the old, weary, monkey look
of subjection to fear, settled on her bronze face. A race old

142

143

NIGHT IN THE HOUSE

in subjection to fear, and unable to shake it off. She would
immediately begin to pour forth to Kate, in a babbling, half
intelligent stream, some story of a house broken mto and a
woman stabbed. And she would say, the owner of the hotel
had sent word that it was not safe for Kate to sleep alone m
the house. She must go to the hotel to sleep.

The whole village was in that state of curious, reptile
apprehension which comes over dark people. A panic fear,
a sense of devilment and horror thick in the night air. When
blue morning came they would cheer up. But at night,
like clotting blood the air would begin to thicken again.

The fear, of course, was communicated from one person
to another. Kate was sure that if Juana and her family
had not been huddled in reptile terror away at the far end
of the house, she herself would have been unafraid. As it
was, Juana was like a terror-struck lizard.

There was no man about the place. Juana had two sons,
Jesus, who was about twenty, and Ezequiel, about seven¬
teen. But Jesus—she pronounced it Hezoosn —ran the little
gasoline motor for the electric light, and he and Ezequiel
slept together on the floor of the little engine house. So
that Juana huddled with her two girls, Concha and Maria,
in the den at the end of Kate’s house, and seemed to sweat
a rank odour of fear.

The village was submerged. Usually the plaza kept alive
till ten o’clock, with the charcoal fires burning and the ice¬
cream man going round with his bucket on his head, end¬
lessly crying: Nieve! Nieve! and the people gossiping on
the streets or listening to the young men with guitars.

Now, by nine o’clock, the place was deserted, curiously
stony and vacuous. And the Jefe sent out the order that
anybody in the streets aften ten o’clock wmild be arrested.

Kate hurried to her house and locked nerself in. It is
not easy to withstand the panic fear of a black-eyed, semi-
barbaric people. The thing communicates itself like some
drug on the air, wringing the heart and paralysing the soul
with a sense of evil; black, horrible evil. \

She would lie in her bed in the absolute dark : the electric
light ms cut off completely, everywhere, at ten o’clock,
P H§H7 e darkness reigned. And she could feel the
de “ 0! H^SK at h of evd movin g on the air in waves.

ehe Wught of the grisly stories of the country, which she

144

THE PLUMED SERPENT

had heard. And she thought again of the people, outwardly
so quiet, so nice, with a gentle smile. But even Humboldt
had said of the Mexicans, that few people bad such a gentle
smile, and at the same time, such fierce eyes. It was not
that their eyes were exactly fierce. But their blackness was
inchoate, with a dagger of white light in it. And in the
inchoate blackness the blood-lust might arise, out of the
sediment of the uncreated past.

Uncreated, half-created, such a people was at the mercy
of old black influences that lay in a sediment at the bottom
of them. While they were quiet, they were gentle and
kindly, with a sort of limpid naivete. But when anything
shook them at the depths, the black clouds would arise, and
they were gone again in the old grisly passions of death,
blood-lust, incarnate hate. A people incomplete, and at the
mercy of old, upstarting lusts.

Somewhere at the bottom of their souls, she felt, was a
fathomless resentment, like a raw wound. The heavy,
bloody-eyed resentment of men who have never been able
to win a soul for themselves, never been able to win them¬
selves a nucleus, an individual integrity out of the chaos of
passions and potencies and death. They are caught in the
toils of old lusts and old activities as in the folds of a black
serpent that strangles the heart. The heavy, evil-smelling

weight of an unconquered past.

And under this weight they live and die, not really sorry
to die. Clogged and tangled in the elements, never able to
extricate themselves. Blackened under a too-strong sun,
surcharged with the heavy sundering electricity of the Mexi¬
can air, and tormented by the bubbling of volcanoes away
below the feet. The tremendous potent elements of the
American continent, that give men powerful bodies but
which weigh the soul down and prevent its rising into birth.
Or, if a man arrives with a soul, the maleficent elements
gradually break it, gradually, till he decomposes into ideas
and mechanistic activities, in a body full of mechanical
energy, but with his blood-soul dead and putrescent.

So, these men, unable to overcome the elements, men held
down by the serpent tangle of sun and electricity wid vol¬
canic emission, they are subject to an ever-recurring, fathom¬
less lust of resentment, a demomsh hatred of life itself.
Then, the instriking thud of a heavy knife, stabbing into a

NIGHT IN THE HOUSE

145

living body, this is the best. No lust of women can equal
that lust. The clutching throb of gratification as the knife

strikes in and the blood spurts out !

It is the inevitable supreme gratification of a people en¬
tangled in the past, and unable to extricate itself. A people
that has never been redeemed, that has not known a

For Jesus is no Saviour to the Mexicans. He is a dead
god in their tomb. As a miner who is entombed under¬
ground by the collapsing of the earth in the gangways, so
do whole nations become entombed under the slow subsi¬
dence of their past. Unless there comes some Saviour, some
Redeemer to drive a new way out, to the sun.

But the white men brought no salvation to Mexico. On
the contrary, they find themselves at last shut in the tomb
along with their dead god and the conquered race.

Which is the status quo.

Kate lay and thought hard, in the black night. At the
same time, she was listening intensely, with a clutch of
horror. She could not control her heart. It seemed
wrenched out of place, and really hurt her. She was, as she
had never been before, absolute physically afraid, blood
afraid. Her blood was wrenched in a paralysis of fear.

In England, in Ireland, during the war and the revolu¬
tion she had known spiritual fear. The ghastly fear of the
rabble; and during the war, nations were nearly all rabble.
The terror of the rabble that, mongrel-like, wanted to break
the free spirit in individual men and women. It was the
cold, collective lust of millions of people, to break the spirit
in the outstanding individuals. They wanted to break this
spirit, so that they could start the great downhill rush back
to old underworld levels, old gold worship and murder lust.
The rabble.

In those days, Kate had known the agony of cold social
fear, as if a democracy were a huge, huge cold centipede
which, if you resisted it, would dig every claw into you.
And the flesh would mortify around every claw.

That had been her worst agony of fear. And she
survived.

Now she knew the real heart-wrench of blood fear,
heart seemed pulled out of place, in a stretched pain.

She dozed, and wakened suddenly, at a small noise.

had

Her

She

146

THE PLUMED SERPENT

sat up in bed. Her doors on to the verandah had shutters.
The doors themselves were fastened, but the shutters were
open for air, leaving the upper space, like the window of the
door, open. And against the dark grey of the night she saw
what looked like a black cat crouching on the bottom of the
panel-space.

“ What is that? ” she said automatically.

Instantly, the thing moved, slid away, and she knew it
was the arm of a man that had been reaching inside to pull
the bolt of the door. She lay for a second paralysed, pre¬
pared to scream. There was no movement. So she leaned
and lit a candle.

The curious panic fear was an agony to her. It paralysed
her and wrenched her heart out of place. She lay prostrate
in the anguish of night-terror. The candle blazed duskily.
There was a far-off mutter of thunder. And the night was
horrible, horrrible, Mexico was ghastly to her beyond descrip¬
tion.

She could not relax, she could not get her heart into
place. “ Now,” she thought to herself, “ I am at the mercy
of this thing, and I have lost myself.” And it was a terrible
feeling, to be lost, scattered, as it were, from herself in a
horror of fear.

“ What can I do? ” she thought, summoning her spirit.
“ How can I help myself? ” She knew she was all alone.

For a long time she could do nothing. Then a certain
relief came to her as she thought : ** I am believing in evil.
I musn’t believe in evil. Panic and murder never start unless
the leading people let slip the control. I don’t really be¬
lieve in evil. I don’t believe the old Pan can wrench us
back into the old, evil forms of consciousness, unless we
wish it. I do believe there is a greater power, which will give
us the greater strength, while we keep the faith in it, and
the spark of contact. Even the man who wanted to break
in here, I don’t think he really had the power. He was just
trying to be mean and wicked, but something in him would
have to submit to a greater faith and a greater power.”

So she re-assured herself, till she had the courage to get
up and fasten her door-shutters at the top. After which
she went from room to room, to see that all was made fast.
And she was thankful to realise that she was afraid of
scorpions on the floor, as well as of the panic horror.

NIGHT IN THE HOUSE

147

Now she had seen that the five doors and the six windows
of her wing of communicating rooms were fast. She was
sealed inside the darkness, with her candle. To get to the
other part of the house, the dining-room and kitchen, she
had to go outside on the verandah.

She grew quieter, shut up with the dusky glow of her
candle. And her heart, still wrenched with the pain of tear,
was thinking : “ Joachim said that evil was the lapsing back
to old life-modes that have been surpassed in us. This
brings murder and lust. But the drums of Saturday night
are the old rhythm, and that dancing round the drum is the
old savage form of expression. Consciously reverting to the
savage. So perhaps it is evil.”

But then again her instinct to believe came up.

“ No ! It’s not a helpless, panic reversal. It is conscious,
carefully chosen. We must go back to pick up old threads.
We must take up the old, broken impulse that will connect
us with t^e mystery of the cosmos again, now we are at the
end of our own tether. We must do it. Don Ram6n is
right. He must be a great man, really. I thought there
were no really great men any more : only great financiers
and great artists and so on, but no great men. He must be
a great man.”

She was again infinitely reassured by this thought.

But again, just as she had blown out the candle, vivid
flares of white light spurted through all the window-cracks,
and thunder broke in great round balls, smashing down.
The bolts of thunder seemed to fall on her heart. She lay
absolutely crushed, in a kind of quiescent hysterics, tor¬
tured. And the hysterics held her listening and tense and
abject, until dawn. And then she was a wreck.

In the morning came Juana, also looking like a dead
insect, with the conventional phrase : “ How have you
passed the night, Nina? ”

“ Badly 1 ” said Kate. Then she told the story of the
black cat, or the man’s arm,

. ** Mire l ” said Juana, in a hushed voice. “ The poor

innocent will be murdered in her bed. No, Nina, you must

go and sleep in the hotel. No no, Nina, you can’t leave

your window shutter open. No, no, impossible. See now,

will you go to the hotel to sleep? The other senora does
it.”

148

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ I don’t want to,” said Kate.

“ You don’t want to, Nina? Ah ! Entonces! Entonces ,
Nina, I will tell Ezequiel to sleep here outside your door,
with his pistol. He has a pistol, and he will sleep outside
your door, and you can leave your shutter open, for air in
the hot night. Ah, Nina, we poor women, we need a man
and a pistol. We ought not to be left alone all the night.
We are afraid, the children are afraid. And imagine it,
that there was a robber trying to open the bolt of your door !
Imagine it to yourself ! No, Nina, we will tell Ezequiel at
mid-day.”

Ezequiel came striding proudly in, at mid-day. He was
a wild, shy youth, very erect and proud, and half savage.
His voice was breaking, and had a queer resonance.

He stood shyly while the announcement was being made
to him. Then he looked at Kate with flashing black eyes,
very much the man to the rescue.

“ Yes ! Yes ! ” he said. “ I will sleep here on th^ corridor.
Don’t have any fear. I shall have my pistol.”

He marched off, and returned with the pistol, an old long-
barrelled affair.

“ It has five shots,” he said, showing the weapon. “ If
you open the door in the night, you must say a word to me
first. Because if I see anything move, I shall fire five shots.
Pst! Pst! ”

She saw by the flash of his eyes what satisfaction it would
give him to fire five shots at something moving in the night.
The thought of shots being fired at him gave him not the
least concern.

“ And Nina,” said Juana, “ If you come home late, after
the light is out, you must call Ezequiel! Because if not,
Bmmm! Brumm !—and who knows who will be killed !

Ezequiel slept on a straw mat on the brick verandah out¬
side Kate’s door, rolled up in his blanket, and with the pistol
at his side. So she could leave her shutter open for air.
And the first night she was kept awake once more by his
fierce snoring. Never had she heard such a tremendous
resonant sound ! What a chest that boy must have ! It was
sound from some strange, savage other world. The noise
kept her awake, but there was something in it which she
liked. Some sort of wild strength.

CHAP : IX. CASA DE LA CUENTAS.

Kate was soon fond of the limping, untidy Juana, and oi
the girls. Concha was fourteen, a thick, heavy, barbaric
girl with a mass of black waving hair which she was always
scratching. Maria was eleven, a shy, thin bird-like thing with
big eyes that seemed almost to absorb the light round her.

It was a reckless family. Juana admitted a different
father for Jesus, but to judge from the rest, one would have
suspected a different father for each of them. There was a
basic, sardonic carelessness in the face of life, in all the
family. They lived from day to day, a stubborn, heavy,
obstinate life of indifference, careless about the past, care¬
less about the present, careless about the future. They had
even no interest in money. Whatever they got they spent
in a minute, and forgot it again.

Without aim or purpose, they lived absolutely d terre,
down on the dark, volcanic earth. They were not animals,
because men and women and their children cannot be
animals. It is not granted us. Go, for once gone, thou
never const return! says the great Urge which drives us
creatively on. When man tries brutally to return to the
older, previous levels of evolution, he does so in the spirit
of cruelty and misery.

So in the black eyes of the family, a certain vicious fear
and wonder and misery. The misery of human beings who
squat helpless outside their own unbuilt selves, unable to
win their souls out of the chaos, and indifferent to all other
victories.

White people are becoming soulless too. But they have
conquered the lower worlds of metal and energy, so they
whizz around in machines, circling the void of their own
emptiness.

To Kate, there was a great pathos in her family. Also a
certain repulsiveness.

Juana and her ohildren, once they accepted their Nina as
their own, were honest with intensity. Point of honour, they
were honest to the least little plum in the fruit bowl. And
almost intensely eager to serve.

Themselves indifferent to their surroundings, they would

149

150

THE PLUMED SERPENT

live in squalor. The earth was the great garbage bowl.
Everything discarded was flung on the earth and they did
not care. Almost they liked to live in a milieu of fleas and
old rags, bits of paper, banana skins and mango stones.
Here’s a piece torn off my dress ! Earth, take it. Here’s
the combings of my hair ! Earth, take them !

But Kate could not bear it. She cared. And immedi¬
ately, the family was quite glad, thrilled that she cared.
They swept the patio with the twig broom till they swept
the very surface of the earth away. Fun ! The Nina had
feelings about it.

She was a source of wonder and amusement to them. But
she was never a class superior. She was a half-incompre¬
hensible, half-amusing wonder-being.

The Nina wanted the aquador to bring two botes of hot
water, quick, from the hot springs, to wash herself all over
every morning. Fun ! Go, Maria, tell the aquador to run
with the Nina’s water.

Then they almost resented it that she shut herself off to
have her bath. She was a sort of goddess to them, to pro¬
vide them with fun and wonder; but she ought always to be
accessible. And a god who is forever accessible to human
beings has an unenviable time of it, Kate soon discovered.

No, it was no sinecure, being a Nina. At dawn began
the scrape-scrape of the twig broom outside. Kate stayed
on in bed, doors fastened but shutters open. Flutter out¬
side ! Somebody wanted to sell two eggs. Where is the
Nina. She is sleeping ! The visitor does not go. Continual
flutter outside.

The aquador! Ah, the water for the Nina’s bath ! She
is sleeping, she is sleeping. “ No ! ” called Kate, slipping
into a dressing-gown and unbolting the door. In come the
children with the bath tub, in comes the aquador with the
two square kerosene cans full of hot water. Twelve
centavos ! Twelve centavos for the aquador! No hay! We
haven’t got twelve centavos. Later ! Later 1 Away trots
the aquador, pole over his shoulder. Kate shuts her doors
and shutters and starts her bath. <»

“Nina? Nina?”

“ What do you want? 99

“ Eggs boiled or fried or rancheros ? Which do you
want? ”

CASA DE LA CUENTAS

151

“ Boiled.”

u Coffee or chocolate ? ”

“ Coffee.”

“ Or do you want tea ? ”

“ No, coffee.”

Bath proceeds.

“ Nina? ”

« Yes.”

“ There is no coffee. We are going to buy some.”

« I’ll take tea.”

** No, Nina 1 I am going. Wait for me.”

“ Go then.”

Kate comes out to breakfast on the verandah. The table
is set, heaped with fruit and white bread and sweet buns.

“ Good morning, Nina. How have you passed the night?
Well! Ah, praised be God ! Maria, the coffee. I’m going
to put the eggs in the water. Oh, Nina, that they may not
be boiled hard !—Look, what feet of the Madonna 1 Look 1
Bonitos! ”

And Juana stooped down fascinated to touch with her
black finger Kate’s white soft feet, that were thrust in light
sandals, just a thong across the foot.

The day had begun. Juana looked upon herself as dedi¬
cated entirely to Kate. As soon as possible she shooed her
girls away, to school. Sometimes they went : mostly they
didn’t. The Nina said they must go to school. Listen !
Listen now 1 Says the Nina that you must go to school 1
Away ! Walk!

Juana would limp back and forth down the long verandah
from kitchen to the breakfast table, carrying away the dishes
one by one. Then, with a great splash, she was washing up.

Morning! Brilliant sun pouring into the patio, on the
hibiscus flowers and the fluttering yellow and green rags of
the banana trees. Birds swiftly coming and going, with
tropical suddenness. In the dense shadow of the mango-
grove, white clad Indians going like ghosts. The sense of
fierce sun and almost more impressive, of dark, intense
shadow. A twitter of life, yet a certain heavy weight of
silence. A dazzling flicker and brilliance of light, yet the
feeling of weight.

Kate would sit alone, rocking on her verandah, pretending
to sew. Silently appears an old man with one egg held up

152

THE PLUMED SERPENT

mysteriously, like some symbol. Would the patrona buy it
for five centavos. La Juana only gives four centavos. All
right? Where is Juana?

Juana appears from the plaza with more purchases. The
egg ! The four centavos ! The account of the spendings.
Entonces! Entonces! Luego! Luego! Ah, Nina, no
tcngo memorial Juana could not read nor write. She
scuffled off to the market with her pesos, bought endless
little things at one or two centavos each, every morning.
And every morning there was a reckoning up. Ah ! Ah !
Where are we? I have no memory. Well then—ah—yes—I
bought ocote for three centavos 1 How much ? How much,
Nina? How much is it now?

It was a game which thrilled Juana to the marrow, reckon¬
ing up the centavos to get it just right. If she was a centavo
short in the change, she was paralysed. Time after time
she would re-appear. There is a centavo short, Nina? Ah,
how stupid I am? But I rvill give you one of mine!

“ Don’t bother,” said Kate. “ Don’t think of it any
more.”

“ But yes. But yes 1 ” and away she limped in distraction.

Till an hour later, loud cry from the far end of the house.

Juana waving a scrap of greenery.

“ Mire 1 Nina ! Compre perjil a un centavo—I bought

parsley for one cent. Is it right? ”

“ It is right,” said ICatc.

And life could proceed once more.

There were two kitchens, the one next the dining-room,
belonging to Kate, and the narrow little shed under the
banana trees, belonging to the servants. From her verandah
Kate looked away down to Juana’s kitchen shed. It had a
black window hole.

Clap ! Clap! Clap! Clap l Why I thought Concha was

at school ! said Kate to herself.

No !—there, in the darkness of the window hole was
Concha’s swarthy face and mane, peering out like some
animal from a cave, as she made the tortillas. Tortillas are
flat pancakes of maize dough, baked dry on a flat earthen¬
ware plate over the fire. And the making consists of clap¬
ping a bit of new dough from the palm of one hand to the
other, till the tortilla is of the requisite thinness, roundness,
and so-called lightness.

158

CASA DE LA CUENTAS

Clap 1 Clap 1 Clap 1 Clap 1 Clap ! Clap 1 clap 1. It was as
inevitable as the tick of some spider, the sound of Concha
making tortillas in the heat of the morning, peering out of
her dark window hole. And some tune after mid-day, t.ie
smoke would be coming out of the window hole; Concha was
throwing the raw tortillas on the big earthen plate over the

slow wood fire. .. . .

Then Ezequiel might or might not stride in, very much

the man, serape poised over one shoulder and big straw hat
jauntily curled, to eat the mid-day tortillas. If he had
work in the fields at any distance, he would not appear till
nightfall. If he appeared, he sat on the doorstep and the
women served him his tortillas and fetched him his drink of
water as if he was a king, boy though he might be, And his
rough, breaking voice was heard in quiet command.

Command was the word. Though he was quiet and
gentle, and very conscientious, there was calm, kingly com¬
mand in his voice when he spoke to his mother or sisters.
The old male prerogative. Somehow, it made Kate want to

ridicule him.

Came her own meal : one of her trials. Hot, rather
greasy soup. Inevitable hot, greasy, rather peppery rice.
Inevitable meat in hot, thick, rather greasy sauce. Boiled
calabacitas or egg-plant, salad, perhaps some dulce made
with milk—and the big basket of fruit. Overhead, the blaz¬
ing tropical sun of late May.

Afternoon, and greater heat. Juana set off with the girls
and the dishes. They would do the washing up in the lake.
Squatting on the stones, they would dabble the plates one
by one, the spoons and the forks one by one in the filmy
water of the lake, then put them in the sun to dry. After
which Juana might wash a couple of towels in the lake and
the girls might bathe. Sauntering the day away—saunter¬
ing the day away.

Jesus, the eldest son, a queer, heavy, greasy fellow,
usually appeared in the afternoon, to water the garden. But
he ate his meals at the hotel, and really lived there, had his
home there. Not that he had any home, any more than
a zopilote had a home. But he ran the planta , and did odd
jobs about the hotel, and worked every day in the year till
half past ten at night, earning twenty-two pesos, eleven
dollars, a month. He wore a black shirt, and his thick.

154

THE PLUMED SERPENT

massive black hair dropped over his low brow. Very near
to an animal. And though, to order, he wore a black
Fascisti shirt, he had the queer, animal jeering of the social¬
ists, an instinct for pulling things down.

His mother and he had a funny little intimacy of quiet
and indifferent mutual taunting of one another. He would
give her some money if she were in a strait. And there was
a thin little thread of blood-bondage between them. Apart
from that, complete indifference.

Ezequiel was a finer type. He was slender and so erect
that he almost curved backwards. He was very shy,
farouche. Proud also, and more responsible to his family.
He would not go to work in an hotel. No. He was a worker
in the fields, and he was proud of it. A man’s work. No
equivocal sort of half-service for him.

Though he was just a hired labourer, yet, working on the
land he never felt he was working for a master. It was the
land he worked for. Somewhere inside himself he felt that
the land was his, and he belonged in a measure to it. Per¬
haps a lingering feeling of tribal, communal land-ownership

and service.

When there was work, he was due to earn a peso a day.
There was often no work : and often only seventy-five cen¬
tavos a day for wage. When the land was dry, he would
try to get work on the road, though this he did not like.

But he earned his peso a day.

Often, there was no work. Often, for days, sometimes for
weeks, he would have to hang about, nothing to do, nothing
to do. Only, when the Socialist Government had begun
giving the peasants bits of land, dividing up the big haci¬
endas, Ezequiel had been allotted a little piece outside the
village. He would go and gather the stone together there,
and prepare to build a little hut. And he would break the
earth with a hoe, his only implement, as far as possible.
But he had no blood connection with this square allotment
of unnatural earth, and he could not get himself into rela¬
tions with it. He was fitful and diffident about it. lhcre

was no incentive, no urge. , . .

On workdays he would come striding in about six o clock,
shvly greeting Kate as he passed. He was a gentleman in
his barbarism. Then, away in the far recess, he woula
rapidly fold tortilla after tortilla, sitting on the floor with

CASA DE LA CUENTAS

155

his back to the wall, rapidly eating the leathery things that
taste of mortar, because the maize is first boiled with lime
to loosen the husk, and accepting another little pile, served
on a leaf, from the cook, Concha. Juana, cook for the Nina,
would no longer condescend to cook for her own family.
And sometimes there was a mess of meat and chile for
Ezequiel to scoop up out of the earthenware casserole, with
his tortillas. And sometimes there was not. But always, he
ate with a certain blind, rapid indifference, that also seems
to be Mexican. They seem to cat even with a certain hostile
reluctance, and have a strange indifference to what or when
they eat.

His supper finished, as a rule he was off again like a shot,
to the plaza, to be among men. And the women would sit
desultorily about, on the ground. Sometimes Kate would
come in at nine o’clock to an empty place—Ezequiel in the
plaza, Juana and Maria disappeared somewhere or other,
and Concha lying asleep like a heap of rags on the gravel
of the patio. When Kate called her, she would raise her
head, stupified and hopeless; then get up like a dog and
crawl away to the gate. The strange stupor of boredom and
hopelessness that was always sinking upon them would make
Kate’s heart stand still with dread.

The peculiar indifference to everything, even to one
another. Juana washed a cotton shirt and a pair of cotton
trousers for each of her sons, once a week, and there her
maternal efforts ended. She saw hardly anything of them,
and was often completely unaware of what Ezequiel was
doing, where he was working, or at what. He had just gone
off to work* no more.

Yet again, sometimes she had hot, fierce pangs of maternal
protectiveness, when the boy was unjustly treated, as he
often was. And if she thought he were ill, a black sort of
fatalistic fear came over her. But Kate had to rouse her
into getting some simple medicine.

Like animals, yet not at all like animals. For animals are
complete in their isolation and their insouciance. With them
it is not indifference. It is completeness in themselves. But
with the family there was always a kind of bleeding of in-
completeness, a terrible stupor of boredom settling down.

I he two girls could not be apart: they must always be
running after one another. Yet Concha continually teased

156

THE PLUMED SERPENT

the big-eyed, naive simpleton of a Maria. And Maria was
always in tears. Or the two were suddenly throwing stones
at one another. But with no real aim to hit. And Juana was
abusing them with sudden vehemence, that flickered in a
minute to complete indifference again.

Queer, the savage ferocity with which the girls would sud¬
denly be throwing stones at one another. But queerer still,
they always aimed just to miss. Kate noticed the same in
the savage attacks the boys made on one another, on the
beach; hurling large stones with intense, terrible ferocity.
But almost always, aiming with a curious cast in the eyes,
just to miss.

But sometimes not. Sometimes hitting with a sharp cut.
And then the wounded one would drop right down, with a
howl, as if dead. And the other boys would edge away, in
a silent kind of dread. And the wounded boy would be
prostrate, not really much hurt, but as if he was killed.

Then, maybe, suddenly he would be up, with a convulsion
of murder in his face, pursuing his adversary with a stone.
And the adversary would abjectly flee.

Always the same thing among the young : a ceaseless,
endless taunting and tormenting. The same as among the
Red Indians. But the Pueblo Indians rarely lapsing from
speech into violence. The Mexican boys almost always.
And almost always, one boy in murderous rage, pursuing
his taunter till he had hurt him : then an abject collapse of
the one hurt. Then, usually, a revival of the one hurt, the
murderous frenzy transferred to him, and the first attacker
fleeing abjectly, in terror. One or the other always abject.

They were a strange puzzle to Kate. She felt something
must be done. She herself was inspired to help. So she
had the two girls for an hour a day, teaching them to read,
to sew, to draw. Maria wanted to learn to read : that she
did want. For the rest, they began well. But soon, the
regularity and the slight insistence of Kate on their atten¬
tion made them take again that peculiar invisible jeering
tone, something peculiar to the American Continent. A
quiet, invisible, malevolent mockery, a desire to wound.
They would press upon her, trespassing upon her privacy,
and with a queer effrontery, doing all they could to walk
over her. With their ugly little wills, trying to pull her will

down.

CASA DE LA CUENTAS

157

“ No, don’t lean on me, Concha. Stand on your own

feet.” , , . ,

The slight grin of malevolence on Concha s face, as she

stood on her own feet. Then :

“ Do you have lice in your hair, Nina? ”

The question asked with a peculiar, subtle, Indian insol-

ence. .

“ No ! ” said "Kate, suddenly angry. “ And now go ! Go !

Go away from me ! Don’t come near me.”

They slunk out, abject. So much for educating them.
Kate had visitors from Guadalajara—great excitement.
But while the visitors were drinking tea with Kate on the
verandah, at the other side of the patio, full in view, Juana,
Concha, Maria, and Felipa, a cousin of about sixteen,
squatted on the gravel with their splendid black hair dow’n
their backs, displaying themselves as they hunted in each
other’s hair for lice. They wanted to be full in view. And
they were it. They wanted the basic fact of lice to be thrust
under the noses of those white people.

Kate strode down the verandah.

“ If you must pick lice,” she said in a shaking voice to
Juana, shaking with anger, “ pick them there, in your own
place, where you can’t be seen.”

One instant, Juana’s black inchoate eyes gleamed with a
malevolent ridicule, meeting Kate’s. The next instant,
humble and abject, the four with their black hair down
their backs slunk into the recess out of sight.

But it pleased Juana that she had been able to make
Kate’s eyes blaze with anger. It pleased her. She felt a
certain low power in herself. True, she was a little afraid of
that anger. But that was what she wanted. She would have
no use for a Nina of whom she was not a bit afraid. And
she wanted to be able to provoke that anger, of which she
felt a certain abject twinge of fear.

Ah the dark races ! Kate’s own Irish were near enough,
for her to have glimpsed some of the mystery. The dark
races belong to a bygone cycle of humanity. They are left
behind in a gulf out of which they have never been able to
climb. And on to the particular white man’s levels they never
will be able to climb. They can only follow as servants.

While the white man keeps the impetus of his own proud,
onward yiarch, the dark races will yield and serve, perforce.

158

THE PLUMED SERPENT

But let the "white man once have a misgiving about his own
leadership, and the dark races will at once attack him, to
pull him down into the old gulfs. To engulf him again.

Which is what is happening. For the white man, let him
bluster as he may, is hollow with misgiving about his own
supremacy.

Full speed ahead, then, for tlw debacle.

But once Kate had been roused to a passion of revulsion
from these lice-picking, down-dragging people, they changed
again, and served her with a certain true wistfulness that
could not but touch her. Juana cared really about nothing.
But just that last thread of relationship that connected her
with Kate and the upper world of daylight and fresh air,
she didn’t want to break. No, no, she didn’t want finally
to drive her Nina away. No no, the only one thing she did
want, ultimately, was to serve her Nina.

But at the same time, she cherished a deep malevolent
grudge against rich people, white people, superior people.
Perhaps the white man has finally betrayed his own leader¬
ship. Who knows ! But it is a thing of the brave, on-
marching soul, and perhaps this has been betrayed already
by the white man. So that the dark are rising upon him.

Juana would come to Kate, telling her stories from the
past. And the sinister mocking film would be on her black
eyes, and her lined copper face would take on its reptile
mask as she would continue : “ Usted sabe, Nina, los grin¬
gos, los gringitos llevan todo—you know, Nina, the gringos
and the gringitos take away everything . . .”

The gringos are the Americans. But Kate herself was in¬
cluded by Juana in the gringitos: the white foreigners. The
woman was making another sliding, insolent attack.

“ It is possible,” said Kate coldly. “ But tell me what
I take away from Mexico.”

“ No, Nina, No ! ” The subtle smile of satisfaction
lurked under the bronze tarnish of Juana’s face. She had
been able to get at the other woman, touch the raw. “ I
don’t speak of you, Nina ! ” But there was too much
protest in it.

Almost, they wanted to drive her away : to insult her and
drag her down and make her want to go away. They
couldn’t help it. Like the Irish, they could cut off their
nose to spite their face.

CASA DE LA CUENTAS

159

The backward races !

At the same time there was a true pathos about them.
Ezequiel had worked for a man for two months, building
a house, when he was a boy of fourteen, in order to get a
serape. At the end of the two months, the man had put him
off, and he had not got the serape : had never gat it. A
bitter disappointment.

But then, Kate was not responsible for that. And Juana
seemed almost to make her so.

A people without the energy of getting on, how could they
fail to be hopelessly exploited. They had been hopelessly
and cruelly exploited, for centuries. And their backbones
were locked in malevolent resistance.

“ But,” as Kate said to herself, “ I don’t want to exploit
them. Not a bit. On the contrary, I am willing to give
more than I get. But that nasty insinuating insultingness
is not fair in the game. I never insult them. I am so care¬
ful not to hurt them. And then they deliberately make these
centipede attacks on me, and are pleased when I am hurt.”

But she knew her own Irish at the game. So she was able
to put Juana and the girls away from her, and isolate her¬
self from them. Once they were put away, their male¬
volence subsided and they remembered what Kate wanted.
While she stayed amiable, they forgot. They forgot to
sweep the patio, they forgot to keep themselves clean. Only
when they were shoved back, into isolation, did they re¬
member again.

The boy, Ezequiel, seemed to her to have more honour
than the women. He never made these insidious attacks.

And when her house was clean and quiet and the air
seemed cleaned again, the soul renewed, her old fondness
for the family came back. Their curious flitting, coming
and going, like birds : the busy clap—clap—clapping of
tortillas, the excited scrunching of tomatoes and chile on
the metate, as Juana prepared sauce. The noise of the
bucket in the well. Jesus, come to water the garden.

The game, the game of it all! Everything they did must
be fun, or they could not do it. They could not abstract
themselves to a routine. Never. Everything must be fun,
must be variable, must be a bit of an adventure. It was
confusion, but after all, a living confusion, not a dead,
dreary thing. Kate remembered her English servants in the

160

THE PLUMED SERPENT

English kitchens : so mechanical and somehow inhuman.
Well, this was the other extreme.

Here there was no discipline nor method at all. Although
Juana and her brats really wanted to do the things Kate
wished, they must do them their own way. Sometimes
Kate felt distracted : after all, the mechanical lines are so
much easier to follow. But as far as possible, she let the
family be. She had to get used, for example, to the vaga¬
ries of her dining table : a little round table that always
stood on the verandah. At breakfast time it would be dis¬
creetly set under the plantas by the salon; for dinner, at
one o’clock, it would have travelled way down the veran¬
dah; for tea it might be under a little tree on the grass.
And then Juana would decide that the Nina must take
supper, two eggs, rancheros, in the dining-room itself,
isolated at the corner of the long dining-table meant for

fourteen people.

The same with the dishes. Why they should, after wash¬
ing up in the big bowls in the kitchen for several days,
suddenly struggle way down to the lake with the unwashed
pots in a basket on Concha’s shoulder, Kate never knew.

Except for the fun of the thing.

Children ! But then, not at all children. None of the
wondering insouciance of childhood. Something dark and
cognisant in their souls all the time : some heavy weight of
resistance. They worked in fits and starts, and could be
verv industrious; then came days when they lay about on
the' ground like pigs. At times they were merry, seated
round on the ground in groups, like Arabian nights, and
laughing away. Then suddenly resisting even merriment :n
themselves, relapsing into the numb gloom. When they
were busily working, suddenly for no reason, throwing away
the tool, as if resenting having given themselves. Careless
in their morals, always changing their loves, the men at
least resisted all the time any real giving of themselves.
They didn’t want the thing they were pursuing. It was the
women who drew them on. And a young man and a girl
going down the road from the lake in the dark, 'teasing and
coking each other in excitement, would startle Kale be¬
cause of their unusualness - the men and women never
walked their sex abroad, as white people do. And the
sudden, sexual laugh of the man, so strange a sound of paw

CASA DE LA CUENTAS 1C1

and desire, obstinate reluctance and helpless passion, a
noise as il something tearing in his breast, was a sound to
remember.

Kate felt her household a burden. In a sense, they were
like parasites, they wanted to live on her life, and pull her
down, pull her down. Again, they were so generous with
her, so good and gentle, she felt they were wonderful. And
then once more she came up against that unconscious, heavy,
reptilian indifference in them, indifference and resistance.

Her servants were the clue to all the native life, for her.
The men always together, erect, handsome, balancing their
great hats on the top of their heads and sitting, standing,
crouching with a snake-like impassivity. The women to¬
gether separately, soft, and as if hidden , wrapped tight in
their dark rebozos. Men and women seemed always to be
turning their backs on one another, as if they didn’t want
to see one another. No flirting, no courting. Only an occa¬
sional quick, dark look, the signal of a weapon-like desire,
given and taken.

The women seemed, on the whole, softly callous and de¬
termined to go their own way : to change men if they wished.
And the men seemed not to care very profoundly. But it
was the women who wanted the men.

The native women, with their long black hair streaming
down their full, ruddy backs, would bathe at one end of the
beach, usually wearing their chemise, or a little skirt. The
men took absolutely no notice. They didn’t even look the
other way. It was the women bathing, that was all. As
if it were, like the charales swimming, just a natural part of
the lake life. The men just left that part of the lake to the
women. And the women sat in the shallows of the l^ke,
isolated in themselves like moor-fowl, pouring water over
their heads and over their ruddy arms from a gourd scoop.

The quiet, unobtrusive, but by no means down-trodden
women of the peon class. They went their owv way,
enveloped in their rebozos as in their own darkness. They
hurried nimbly along, their full cotton skirts swinging,
chirping and quick like birds. Or they sat in the lake with

ru 1streamin g> pouring water over themselves : again
like birds. Or they passed with a curious slow inevitability
up the lake-shore, with a heavy red jar of water perched on
one shoulder, one arm over the head, holding the rim of the

1C2

THE PLUMED SERPENT

jar. They- had to carry all water from the lake to their
houses. There was no town supply. Or, especially on
Sunday afternoons, they sat in their doorways lousing one
another. The most resplendent belles, with magnificent
black wavy hair, were most thoroughly loused. It was as
if it were a meritorious public act.

The men were the obvious figures. They assert themselves
on the air. They are the dominant. Usually they are in
loose groups, talking quietly, or silent : always standing or
sitting apart, rarely touching one another. Often a single
man would stand alone at a street corner in his scrape,
motionless for hours, like some powerful spectre. Or a man
would lie on the beach as if he had been cast up dead from
the waters. Impassive, motionless, they would sit side by
side on the benches of the plaza, not exchanging a word.
Each one isolated in his own fate, his eyes black and quick

like a snake’s, and as blank.

It seemed to Kate that the highest thing this country
might produce would be some powerful relationship of man
to man. Marriage itself would always be a casual thing.
Though the men seemed very gentle and protective to the
little children. Then they forgot them.

But sex itself was a powerful, potent thing, not to be
played with or paraded. The one mystery. And a mystery
greater than the individual. The individual hardly counted.

It was strange to Kate to see the Indian huts on the
shore, little holes built of straw or corn-stalks, with half-
naked children squatting on the naked earth floor, and a
lousy woman-squalor around, a litter of rags and bones, and
a sharp smell of human excrement. The people have no
noses. And standing silent and erect not far from the hole
of the doorway, the man, handsome and impassive. How
could it be, that such a fine-looking human male should be
so absolutely indifferent, content with such paltry squalor.

But there he was, unconscious. He seemed to have life and
passion in him. And she knew he was strong. No men in
the world can carry heavier loads on their backs, for longer
distances, than these Indians. She had seen an Indian trot¬
ting down a street with a piano on his back : holding it, also,
by a band round his forehead. From his forehead, and on
his spine he carried it, trotting along. The women carry
with a brand round the breast.

CASA DE LA CUENTAS

168

So there is strength. And apparently , there is passionate
life. But no energy. Nowhere in Mexico is there any sign
of energy. This is, as it were, switched off.

Even the new artizan class, though it imitates the artizan
class of the United States, has no real energy. There are
workmen’s clubs. The workmen dress up and parade a best
girl on their arm. But somehow, it seems what it is, only
a weak imitation.

Kate’s family was increased, without her expecting it.
One day there arrived from Ocotlan a beautiful ox-eyed
girl of about fifteen, wrapped in her black cotton rebozo,
and somewhat towny in her Madonna-meekness : Maria del
Carmen. With her, Julio, a straight and fierce young man
of twenty-two. They had just been married, and had come
to Sayula for a visit. Julio was Juana’s cousin.

Might they sleep in the patio with herself and the girls,
was Juana’s request. They would stay only two days.

Kate was amazed. Maria del Carmen must have had some
Spanish blood, her beauty was touched with Spain. She
seemed even refined and superior. Yet she was to sleep out on
the ground like a dog, with her young husband. And he, so
erect and proud-looking, possessed nothing in the world but
an old serape.

“ There are three spare bedrooms,” said Kate. “ They
may sleep in one of those.”

The beds were single beds. Would they need more
blankets? she asked Juana.

No ! They would manage with the one serape of Julio’s.
The new family had arrived. Julio was a bricklayer.
That is to say, he worked building the adobe walls of the
little houses. He belonged to Sayula, and had come back
for a visit.

The visit continued. Julio would come striding in at mid¬
day and at evening; he was looking for work. Maria del
Carmen, in her one black dress, wouldfequat on the floor
and pat tortillas. She was allowed to cook them in Juana’s
kitchen hole. And she talked and laughed with the girls.

.^ en Julio was home, he would lie on the ground
* ji I s k ac k to the wall, impassive, while Maria del Carmen
fondfcd his thick black hairf

to hisTo ^ 616 *** ^° Ve * ® u t even now, he was not yielding

1C4

THE PLUMED SERPENT

She wanted to go back to Ocotlan, where she was at home,
and more a senorita than here in Sayula. But he refused.
There was no money : the young menage lived on about
five American cents a day.

Kate was sewing. Maria del Carmen, who didn’t even
know how to put a chemise together, watched with great
eyes. Kate taught her, and bought a length of cotton
material. Maria del Carmen was sewing herself a dress !

Julio had got work at a peso a day. The visit continued.
Kate thought Julio wasn’t very nice with Maria del Carmen :
his quiet voice was so overbearing in command when he
spoke to her. And Maria del Carmen, who was a bit towny,
did not take it well. She brooded a little.

The visit stretched into weeks. And now Juana was get¬
ting a bit tired of her relative.

But Julio had got a bit of money. He had rented a little
one-room adobe house, at one peso fifty per week. Maria
del Carmen was going to move into her own home.

Kate saw the new outfit got together. It consisted of one
straw mat, three cooking plates of earthenware, five bits of
native crockery, two wooden spoons, one knife and Julio’s
old blanket. That was all. But Maria del Carmen was
moving in.

Kate presented her with a large old eiderdown, whose
silk was rather worn, a couple of bowls, and a few more
bits of crockery. Maria del Carmen was set up. Good!
Good! Oh Good! Kate heard her voice down the patio.
I have got a coverlet! I have got a coverlet!

In the rainy season, the nights can be very cold, owing
to evaporation. Then the natives lie through the small
hours like lizards, numb and prostrate with cold. They are
lying on the damp earth on a thin straw mat, with a corner
of an old blanket to cover them. And the same terrible
inertia makes them endure it, without trying to make any
change. They ct^ld carry in corn husks or dry banana
leaves for a bed. They could even cover themselves with
banana leaves.

But no ! On a thin mat on damp cold earth they lie and
tremble with cold, night after night, night after night,

night after night. .

But Maria del Carmen was a bit towny. Oh good! OU

goodl Vve got a coverlet!

CHAP : X. DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA.

Kate had been in Sayula ten days before she had any sign
from Don Ramon. She had been out in a boat on the lake,
and had seen his house, round the bend of the western
point. It was a reddish-and-yellow two-storey house with a
little stone basin for the boats, and a mango grove between
it and the lake. Among the trees, away from the lake, were
the black adobe huts, two rows, of the peons.

The hacienda had once been a large one. But it had been
irrigated from the hills, and the revolutions had broken all
the aqueducts. Only a small supply of water was available.
Then Don Ramon had had enemies in the Government. So
that a good deal of his land was taken away to be divided
among the peons. Now, ho had only some three hundred
acres. The two hundred acres along the lake shore were
mostly lost to him. He worked a few acres of fruit land
round the house, and in a tiny valley just in the hills, he
raised sugar cane. On the patches of the mountain slope,
little patches of maize were to be seen.

But Doha Carlota had money. She was from Torreon
and drew still a good income from the mines.

A mozo came with a note from Don Ram6n : might he
bring his wife to call on Kate.

Doha Carlota was a thin, gentle, wide-eyed woman, with
a slightly startled expression, and soft, brownish hair. She
was pure European in extraction, of a Spanish father and
French mother : very different from the usual stout, over-
powdered, ox-like Mexican matron. Her face was pale,
faded, and without any make-up at all. Her thin, eager
figure had something English about it, but her strange,
wide brown eyes were not English. She spoke only Spanish
—or French. But her Spanish was so slow and distinct and
lightly plaintive, that Kate understood her at once.

The two women understood one another quickly, but were
a little nervous of one another. Dona Carlota was delicate
and sensitive like a Chihuahua dog, and with the same
slightly prominent eyes. Kate felt she had rarely met a
woman with such a doglike finesse of gentleness. And the
two women talked. Ram6n, large and muted, kept himself

1 -

1C6

THE PLUMED SERPENT

in reserve. It was as if the two women rushed together to
unite against his silence and his powerful, different signifi¬
cance.

Kate knew at once that Dona Carlota loved him, but with
a love that was now nearly all will. She had worshipped
him, and she had had to leave off worshipping him. She had
had to question him. And she would never now cease from
questioning.

So he sat apart, a little constrained, his handsome head
hanging a little, and his dark, sensitive hands dangling
between his thighs.

“ I had such a wonderful time ! ” Kate said suddenly to
him. “ I danced a dance round the drum with the Men of
Quetzalcoatl.”

“ I heard,” he said, with a rather stiff smile.

Dona Carlota understood English, though she would not
speak it.

“ You danced with the men of Quetzalcoatl ! ” she said
in Spanish, in a pained voice. “ But, Seiiora, why did you
do such a thing? Oh why? ”

“ I was fascinated,” said Kate.

“ No, you must not be fascinated. No! No ! It is not
good. I tell you, I am so sorry my husband interests him¬
self in this thing. I am so sorry.”

Juana was bringing a bottle of vermouth : all that Kate
had to offer her visitors, in the morning.

“ You went to see your boys in the United States? ”
said Kate to Dona Carlota. “ How were they ? ”

“ Oh, better, thank you. They are well; that is, the
younger is very delicate.”

“ You didn’t bring him home? ”

** No ! No ! I think they are better at school. Here—
j, ere —there are so many things to trouble them. No ! But
they will come home next month, for the vacation.”

“ How nice ! ” said Kate. “ Then I shall see them. They
will be here, won’t thev?—on the lake? ”

“ Well !—I am not sure. Perhaps for a little while. You
see I am so busy in Mexico with my Cuna.”

“ What is a Cuna ? ” said Kate; she only knew it was the

Spanish for cradle.

It turned out to be a foundlings* home, run by a few
obscure Carmelite sisters. And Dona Carlota was the

DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA 167

director. Kate gathered that Don Ramon’s wife was an
intense, almost exalted Catholic. She exalted herself in the

Church, and in her work for the Cuna. _

“ There are so many children born in Mexico, said Dona
Carlota, “ and so many die. If only we could save them,
and equip them for life. We do a little, all we can. _

It seemed, the waste, unwanted babies could be delivered
in at the door of the Cuna, like parcels. The mother had
only to knock, and hand in the little living bundle.

“ It saves so many mothers from neglecting their babies,
and letting them die,” said Dona Carlota. “ Then we do
what we can. If the mother doesn’t leave a name, I name
the child. Very often I do. The mothers just hand over
a little naked thing, sometimes without a name or a rag to
cover it. And we never ask.”

The children were not all kept in the Home. Only a small
number. Of the others, some decent Indian woman was
paid a small sum to take the child into her home. Every
month she must come with the little one to the Cuna, to
receive her wage. The Indians are so very rarely unkind to
children. Careless, yes. But rarely, rarely unkind.

In former days, Dona Carlota said, nearly every well-born
lady in Mexico would receive one or more of these foundlings
into her home, and have it brought up with the family. It
was the loose, patriarchal generosity innate in the bosoms of
the Spanish-Mexicans. But now, few children were adopted.
Instead, they were taught as far as possible to be carpenters
or gardeners or house-servants, or, among the girls, dress¬
makers, even school-teachers.

Kate listened with uneasy interest. She felt there was so
much real human feeling in this Mexican charity : she was
almost rebuked. Perhaps what Dona Carlota was doing was
the best that could be done, in this half-wild, helpless
country. At the same time, it was such a forlorn hope, it
made one’s heart sink.

And Dona Carlota, confident as she was in her good works,
still had just a bit the look of a victim; a gentle, sensitive,
slightly startled victim. As if some secret enemy drained
her blood.

Don Ram6n sat there impassive, listening without heed¬
ing; solid and unmoving against the charitable quiver of his
wife’s emotion. He let her do as she would. But against

IGS

THE PLUMED SERPENT

her work and against her flow he was in silent, heavy, un¬
changing opposition. She knew this, and trembled in her
nervous eagerness, as she talked to Kate about the Cuna,
and won Kate’s sympathy. Till it seemed to her that there
was something cruel in Don Ramon’s passive, masked poise.
An impassive male cruelty, changeless as a stone idol.

“ Now won’t you come and spend the duy with me while
I am here with Don Ramon? ” said Dona Carlota. “ The
house is very poor and rough. It is no longer what it used
to be. But it is your house if you will come.”

Kate accepted, and said she would prefer to walk out. It
was only four miles, and surely she would be safe, with
Juana.

“ I will send a man to come with you,” said Don Ramon.
“ It might not be quite safe.”

“ Where is General Viedma ? ” asked Kate.

“ We shall try to get him out when you come,” replied
Dona Carlota. “ I am so very fond of Don Cipriano, I have
known him for many years, and he is the godfather of my
younger son. But now he is in command of the Guadalajara
division, he is not very often able to come out.”

“ I wonder why he is a general ? ” said Kate. “ He seems
to me too human.”

“ Oh, but he is very human too. But he is a general;
yes, yes, he wants to be in command of the soldiers. And
I tell you, he is very strong. He has great power with his
regiments. They believe in him, oh, they believe in him.
He has that power, you know, that some of the higher
types of Indians have, to make many others want to follow
them and fight for them. You know? Don Cipriano is like
that. You can never change him. But I think a woman
might be wonderful for him. He has lived so without
any woman in his life. He won’t care about them.”

“ What does he care about? ” asked Kate.

“ Ah ! ” Doha Carlota started as if stung. Then she
glanced quickly, involuntarily at her husband, as she added :
“ I don’t know. Really, I don’t know.”

“ The Men of Quetzalcoatl,” said Don Ramon heavily,

with a little smile.

But Doha Carlota seemed to be able to take all the ease
and the banter out of him. He seemed stiff and a bit stupid.

“ Ah, there ! There ! There you have it ! The Men of

DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA 169

Quetzalcoatl—that is a nice thing for him to care about!

A nice thing, I say,” fluttered Dona Carlota, in her gentle,
fragile, scolding way. And it was evident to Kate that she
adored both the men, and trembled in opposition to their
wrongness, and would never give in to them.

To Ramon it was a terrible burden, his wife’s quivering,
absolute, blind opposition, taken in conjunction with her
helpless adoration.

A man-servant appeared at nine o’clock one morning, to
accompany Kate to the hacienda, which was called Jamil-
tepec. He had a basket, and had been shopping in the
market. An elderly man, with grey in his moustache, he had
bright young eyes and seemed full of energy. His bare feet
in the huaraches were almost black with exposure, but his
clothes were brilliantly white.

Kate was glad to be walking. The one depressing thing
about life in the villages was that one could not walk out
into the country. There was always the liability to be held
up or attacked. And she had walked already, as far as
possible, in every direction, in the neighbourhood of the
village, accompanied usually by Ezequiel. Now she was
beginning to feel a prisoner.

She was glad, then, to be setting off. The morning was
clear and hot, the pale brown lake quite still, like a phantom.
People were moving on the beach, in the distance tiny, like
dots of white : white dots of men following the faint dust
of donkeys. She wondered often why humanity was like
specks in the Mexican landscape; just specks of life.

They passed from the lake shore to the rough, dusty road
going west, between the steep slope of the hills and the bit
of flat by the lake. For almost a mile there were villas,
most of them shut up fast, some of them smashed, with
broken walls and smashed windows. Only flowers bloomed
in masses above the rubble.

In the empty places were flimsy straw huts of the natives,
hap-hazard, as if blown there. By the road under the hill,
were black-grey adobe huts, like boxes, and fowls running
about, and brown pigs or grey pigs spotted with black
careered and grunted, and half naked children, dark orange-
brown, trotted or lay flat on their faces in the road, their
little naked posteriors hutched up, fast asleep. Already
asleep again.

170

THE PLUMED SERPENT

The houses were many of them being re-thatched, or the
tiled roofs were being patched by men who assumed a
great air of importance at having undertaken such a task.
They were pretending to hurry, too, because the real rains
might begin any day. And in the little stony levels by the
lake, the land was being scratch-ploughed by a pair of oxen
and a lump of pointed wood.

But this part of the road Kate knew. She knew the fine
villa on the knoll, with its tufts of palms, and the laid-out
avenues that were laid out, indeed, as the dead are, to
crumble back again. She was glad to be past the villas,
where the road came down to the lake again, under big
shady trees that had twisted, wriggly beans. On the left
was the water, the colour of turtle doves, lapping the pale
fawn stones. At a water-hole of a stream in the beach, a
cluster of women were busily washing clothes. In the
shallows of the lake itself two women sat bathing, their
black hair hanging dense and wet. A little further along, a
man was wading slowly, stopping to throw his round net
skilfully upon the water, then slowly stooping and gather¬
ing it in, picking out the tiny, glittery fish called charales,
Strangely silent and remote everything, in the gleaming
morning, as if it were some distant period of time.

A little breeze was coming from the lake, but the deep
dust underfoot was hot. On the right the hill rose precipi¬
tous, baked and yellowish, giving back the sun and the
intense dryness, and exhaling the faint, dessicated, peculiar
smell of Mexico, that smells as if the earth had sweated itself

All the time strings of donkeys trotted laden through the
dust, their drivers stalking erect and rapid behind, watching
with eyes like black holes, but always answering Kate s
salute with a respectful Adios! And Juana echoed her
laconic Adiosn ! She was limping, and she thought it horrible
of Kate to walk four miles, when they might have struggled
out in an old hired motor-car, or gone in a boat, or even

ridden donkey-back. . ,

But to go on foot! Kate could hear all her cnada s

feelings in the drawled, sardonic Adinsn ! But the man

behind strode bravely and called cheerfully. His pistol was

prormn^ ^ ycllow roc ]< came jutting at the road. The road

DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA 171

wound round it, and into a piece of flat open country. There
were fields of dry stone, and hedges of dusty thorn and
cactus. To the left the bright green of the willows by the
lake-shore. To the right the hills swerved inland, to meet
the sheer, fluted sides of dry mountains. Away ahead, the
hills curved back at the shore, and a queer little crack or
niche showed. This crack in the hills led from Don Ramdn’s
shore-property to the little valley where he grew the sugar
cane. And where the hills approached the lake again, there
was a dark clustering of mango trees, and the red upper-
storey of the hacienda house.

“ There it is 1 ” cried the man behind. “ Jamiltepec,
Senorita. La hacienda de Don Ram6n ! ”

And his eyes shone as he said the name. He was a proud
peon, and he really seemed happy.

** Look ! How far ! ” cried Juana.

“ Another time,” said Kate, “ I shall come alone, or with
Ezequiel.”

“ No, Nina! Don’t say so. Only my foot hurts this
morning.”

“ Yes. Better not to bring you.”

“ No, Nina ! I like to come, very much ! ”

The tall windmill fan for drawing up water from the lake
was spinning gaily. A little valley came down from the
niche in the hills, and at the bottom a little water running.
Towards the lake, where this valley flattened out, was a
grove of banana plants, screened a little from the lake
breeze by a vivid row of willow-trees. And on the top of the
slope, where the road ran into the shade of mango trees, were
the two rows of adobe huts, like a village, set a little back
from the road.

Women were coming up between the trees, on the patch
from the lake, with jars of water on their shoulders; children
were playing around the doors, squatting with little naked
posteriors in deep dust; and here and there a goat was

rm ere< ** ^ en ™ so ^ e< * w hite clothes were lounging, with
folded arms and one leg crossed in front of the other, against
the corner of a house, or crouching under the walls. Not

y any means dolce far niente. They seemed to be waiting,
eternally waiting for something.

That way, Senorita! ” called the man with the basket,
running to «ide and indicating the smoother road sloping

172

THE PLUMED SERPENT

down between some big trees, towards the white gate of the
hacienda. “ We are here ! ”

Always he spoke with pleased delight, as if the place were
a wonder-place to him.

The big doors of the zaguan, the entrance, stood open,
and in the shade of the entrance-way a couple of little
soldiers were seated. Across the cleared, straw-littered
space in front of the gates two peons were trotting, each
with a big bunch of bananas on his head. The soldiers said
something, and the two peons halted in their trotting, and
slowly turned under their yellow-green load, to look back at
Kate and Juana and the man Martin, approaching down the
road. Then they turned again and trotted into the court¬
yard, barefoot.

The soldiers stood up. Martin, trotting at Kate’s side
again, ushered her into the arched entrance, where the
ox-wagons rumbling through had worn deep ruts. Juana
came behind, making a humble nose.

Kate found herself in a big, barren yard, that seemed
empty. There were high walls on the three sides, with sheds
and stables. The fourth side, facing, was the house, with
heavily-barred windows looking on to the courtyard, but
with no door. Instead, there was another zaguan, or passage
with closed doors, piercing the house.

Martin trotted ahead to knock on the closed doors. Kate
stood looking round at the big yard. In a shed in one
corner, four half-naked men were packing bunches of bana¬
nas. A man in the shade was sawing poles, and two men
in the sun were unloading tiles from a donkey. In a corner
was a bullock wagon, and a pair of big black-and-white oxen
standing with heads pressed down, waiting.

The big doors opened, and Kate entered the second
zaguan. It was a wide entrance way, with stairs going up
on^one side, and Kate lingered to look through the open iron
gates in front of her, down a formal garden hemmed in with
huge mango trees, to the lake, with its little artificial harbour
where two boats were moored. The lake seemed to givt
off a great light, between the dark walls of mango.

At the back of the new-comers the servant woman closed
the big doors on to the yard, then waved Kate to the stairs.

“ Pass this way, Senorita.”

A bell tinkled above. Kate climbed the stone stairs. And

DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA 178

there above her was Dona Carlota, in white muslin and with
white shoes and stockings, her face looking curiously yellow
and faded by contrast. Her soft brown hair was low over
her ears, and she held out her thin brownish arms with

queer effusiveness. „ , „

“ go, you have come ! And you have walked, walked all

the way? Oh, imagine walking in so much sun and dust!
Come, come in and rest.”

She took Kate’s hands and led her across the open terrace
at the top of the stairs.

“ It is beautiful here,” said Kate.

She stood on the terrace, looking out past the mango
trees at the lake. A distant sailing canoe was going down
the breeze, on the pallid, unreal water. Away across rose the
bluish, grooved mountains, with the white speck of a village :
far away in the morning it seemed, in another world, in
another life, in another mode of time.

“ What is that village? ” Kate asked.

“ That one? That one there? It is San Ildcfonso,” said
Dona Carlota, in her fluttering eagerness.

“ But it is beautiful here ! ” Kate repeated.

“ Hcrmoso—si! Si, bonito ! ” quavered the other woman
uneasily, always answering in Spanish.

The house, reddish and yellow in colour, had two short
wings towards the lake. The terrace, with green plants on
the terrace wall, went round the three sides, the roof above
supported by big square pillars that rose from the ground.
Down below, the pillars made a sort of cloisters around the
three sides, and in the little stone court was a pool of water.
Beyond, the rather neglected formal garden with strong sun
and deep mango-shade.

“ Come, you will need to rest! ” said Dona Carlota.

“ I would like to change my shoes,” said Kate.

She was shown into a high, simple, rather bare bedroom
with red-tiled floor. There she changed into the shoes and
stockings Juana had carried, and rested a little.

As she lay resting, she heard the dulled thud-thud of the
tom-tom drum, but, save the crowing of a cock in the dis¬
tance, no other sound on the bright, yet curiously hollow
Mexican morning. And the drum, thudding with its dulled,
insistence, made her uneasy. It sounded like some¬
thing coming over the horizon.

174

THE PLUMED SERPENT

She rose, and went into the long, high salon where Dona
Carlota was sitting talking to a man in black. The salon,
with its three window-doors open on to the terrace, its worn,
red floor tiled with old square bricks, its high walls colour¬
washed a faint green, and the many-beamed ceiling white¬
washed ; and with its bareness of furniture; seemed like part
of the out-of-doors, like some garden-arbour put for shade.
The sense, which houses have in hot climates, of being just
three walls wherein one lingers for a moment, then goes away
again.

As Kate entered the room, the man in black rose and
shook hands with Doha Carlota, bowing very low and defer¬
ential. Then with a deferential sideways sort of bow to
Kate, he vanished out of doors.

“ Come 1 ” said Dona Carlota to Kate. “ Are you sure
now you are rested? ” And she pulled forward one of the
cane rocking-chairs that had poised itself in the room, en
route to nowhere.

“ Perfectly ! ” said Kate. “ How still it seems here !
Except for the drum. Perhaps it is the drum that makes
it seem so still. Though I always think the lake makes a
sort of silence.”

“ Ah, the drum ! ” cried Dona Carlota, lifting her hand
with a gesture of nervous, spent exasperation. “ I cannot
hear it. No, I cannot, I cannot bear to hear it.”

And she rocked herself in a sudden access of agitation.

“ It does hit one rather below the belt,” said Kate.
“ What is it? ”

“ Ah, do not ask me ! It is my husband.”

She made a gesture of despair, and rocked herself almost
into unconsciousness.

“ Is Don Ram6n drumming? ”

“ Drumming? ” Dona Carlota seemed to start. “ No !
Oh no ! He is not drumming, himself. He brought down
two Indians from the north to do that.”

“ Did he ! ” said Kate, non-committal.

But Doha Carlota was rocking in a sort of semi-conscious¬
ness. Then she seemed to pull herself together.

44 I must talk to somebody, I must! 99 she said, suddenly
straightening herself in her chair, her face creamy and
creased, her soft brown hair sagging over her ears, her brown
eyes oddly desperate. “ May I talk to you ? ”

DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA 175

“ Do ! ” said Kate, rather uneasy. .

“ You know what Ramon is doing? she said, looking at

Kate almost furtively, suspiciously.

“ Does he want to bring back the old gods ? said Rate

vaguely. . . ,

“ Ah 1 ” cried Dona Carlota, again with that desperate,

flying jerk of her hand. “ As if it were possible! As if it
were possible ! The old gods ! Imagine it, Senora ! The old
gods ! Why what are they ? Nothing but dead illusions.
And ugly, repulsive illusions! Ah 1 I always thought my
husband such a clever man, so superior to me ! Ah, it is
terrible to have to change one’s idea ! This is such non¬
sense. How dare he ! How dare he take such nonsense
seriously ! How does he dare ! ”

“ Does he believe in it himself ? ” asked Kate.

“ Himself ? But, Senora—” and Dona Carlota gave a
pitiful, pitying smile of contempt. “ How could he ! As
if it were possible. After all he is an educated man ! How
could he believe in such nonsense l ”

“ Then why does he do it? ”

“Why? Why? ” There was a tone of unspeakable
weariness in Doha Carlota’s voice. “ I wish I knew. I
think he has gone insane, as Mexicans do. Insane like
Francisco Villa, the bandit.”

Kate thought of the pug-faced notorious Pancho Villa in
wonder, unable to connect him with Don Ramon.

“ All the Mexicans, as soon as they rise above them¬
selves, go that way,” said Doha Carlota. “ Their pride
gets the better of them. And then they understand noth¬
ing, nothing but their own foolish will, their will to be very,
very important. It is just the male vanity. Don’t you
think, Senora, that the bginning and the end of a man is his
vanity ? Don’t you think it was just against this danger
that Christ came, to teach men a proper humility. To teach
them the sin of pride. But that is why they hate Christ so
much, and His teaching. First and last, they want their
own vanity.”

Kate had often thought so herself. Her own final con¬
clusion about men was that they were the vanity of vani¬
ties, nothing but vanity. They must be flattered and made
to^feel great: Nothing else.

* now » my husband wants to go to the other extreme

176

THE PLUMED SERPENT

of Jesus. He wants to exalt pride and vanity higher than
God. Ah, it is terrible, terrible ! And foolish like a little
boy ! Ah, what is a man but a little boy who needs a nurse
and a mother ! Ah, Sehora, I can’t bear it.”

Doha Carlota covered her face with her hand, as if swoon-
ing.

“ But there is something wonderful, too, about Don
Ramon,” said Kate coaxingly : though at the moment she
hated him.

“ Wonderful! Ah yes, he has gifts. He has great gifts !
But what are gifts to a man who perverts them ! ”

“ Tell me what you think he really wants,” said Kate.

“ Power 1 Just power 1 Just foolish, wicked power. As
if there had not been enough horrible, wicked power let
loose in this country. But he—he—he wants to be beyond
them all. He—he—he wants to be worshipped. To be
worshipped ! To be worshipped ! A God ! He, whom I’ve
held, I’ve held in my arms ! He is a child, as all men are
children. And now he wants—to be worshipped— ! ” She
went off into a shrill, wild laughter, covering her face with
her hands, and laughing shrilly, her laughter punctuated by
hollow, ghastly sobs.

Kate sat in absolute dismay, waiting for the other woman
to recover herself. She felt cold against these hysterics, and
exerted all her heavy female will to stop them.

“ After all,” she said, when Dona Carlota became quiet,
her face in her hands, “ it isn’t your fault. We can’t be
responsible, even for our husbands. I know that , since my
husband died, and I couldn’t prevent him dying. And then-
then I learned that no matter how you love another person,
you can’t really do anything, you are helpless when it comes
to the last things. You have to leave them to themselves,
when they want to die : or when they want to do things
that seem foolish, so, so foolish, to a woman.

Doha Carlota looked up at the other woman.

“ You loved your husband very much—and he died?

she said softly.

“ I did love him. And I shall never, never love another
man. I couldn’t. I’ve lost the power.”

“ And why did he die? ” ,.

“ Ah, even that was really his own fault. He broke ms
own soul and spirit, in those Irish politics. I knew it was

DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA 177

wronff What does Ireland matter, what does nationalism
and all that rubbish matter, really ! And revolutions

They are so, so stupid and vieux jeu. Ah 1 It would have
been so much better if Joachim had been content to live
his life in peace, with me. It could be so jolly, so lovely.
And I tried and tried and tried with him But it was no
good. He wanted to kill himself with that beastly Irish
business, and I tried in vain to prevent him.

Dona Carlota stared slowly at Kate. ,

“ As a woman must try to prevent a man, wuen he is

going wrong,” she said. “ As I try to prevent Ram6n. As
he will get himself killed, as surely as they all do, down to
Francisco Villa. And when they are dead, what good is it

all? ”

“ When they are dead,” said Kate, “ then you know

it’s no good.”

“You do! Oh, Sehora, if you think you can help me
with Ramon, do help me, do ! For it means the death either
of me or him. And I shall die, though he is wrong. Unless
he gets killed.”

“ Tell me what he wants to do,” said Kate. What
does he think he wants to do, anyhow ?—Like my husband
thought he wanted to make a free Ireland and a great Irish
people. But I knew all the time, the Irish aren’t a great
people any more, and you can’t make them free. They arc
only good at destroying—just mere stupid destroying. How
can you make a people free, if they aren’t free. If something
inside them compels them to go on destroying ! ”

“ I know ! I know ! And that is Ramdn. He wants to
destroy even Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, for this people.
Imagine it! To destroy Jesus and the Blessed Virgin ! the
last thing they’ve got! ”

“ But what does he say himself, that he wants to do ? ”
“ He says he wants to make a new connection between
the people and God. He says himself, God is always God.
But man loses his connection with God.- And then he can
never recover it again, unless some new Saviour comes to
give him his new connection. And every new connection
is different from the last, though God is always God. And
now, Ram6n says, the people have lost God. And the
Saviour cannot lead them to Him any more. There must
be a new Saviour with a new vision. But ah, Senora, that

178

THE PLUMED SERPENT

is not true for me. God is love, and if Ramon would only
submit to love, he would know that he had found God. But
he is perverse. Ah, if we could be together, quietly loving,
and enjoying the beautiful world, and waiting in the love of
God! Ah, Sehora, why, why, why can’t he see it? Oh,
why can’t he see it 1 Instead of doing all these—”

The tears came to Dona Carlota’s eyes, and spilled over
her cheeks. Kate also was in tears, mopping her face.

“ It’s no good ! ” she said, sobbing. “ I know it’s no
good, no matter what we do. They don’t want to be happy
and peaceful. They want this strife and these other false,
horrible connections. It’s no good whatever we do ! That's
what’s so bitter, so bitter ! ”

The two women sat in their bent-wood rocking-chairs and
just sobbed. And as they sobbed, they heard a step coming
along the terrace, the faint swish of the sandals of the
people.

It was Don Ram6n, drawn unconsciously by the emo¬
tional disturbance of the two women.

Dona Carlota hastily dabbed her eyes and her sniffing
nose, Kate blew her nose like a trumpet, and Don Ramon
stood in the doorway.

He was dressed in white, dazzling, in the costume of the
peons, the white blouse jacket and the white, wide panta¬
loon trousers. But the white was linen, slightly starched,
and brilliant, almost unnatural in its whiteness. From under
his blouse, in front, hung the ends of a narrow woollen sash,
white, with blue and black bars, and a fringe of scarlet.
And on his naked feet were the plaited huaraches, of blue
and black strips of leather, with thick, red-dyed soles. His
loose trousers were bound round the ankles with blue, red
and black woollen braids.

Kate glanced at him as he stood in the sun, so dazzlingly
white, that his black hair and dark face looked like a hole in
the atmosphere. He came forward, the ends of his sash
swinging against his thighs, his sandals slightly swishing.

“ I am pleased to see you,” he said, shaking hands with
Kate. “ How did you come? ”

He dropped 'into a chair, and sat quite still. The two
women hung their heads, hiding their faces. The presence
of the man seemed to put their emotion out of joint. He
ignored all the signs of their discomfort, overlooking it with

DON RAMON AND DONA CARLOTA 179

a powerful will. There was a certain strength in his pre¬
sence. They all cheered up a bit.

“ You didn’t know my husband had become one of the
people— a real peon—a Senor Peon, like Count Tolstoy
became a Senor Moujik?” said Doha Carlota, with an

attempt at raillery.

** Anyway it suits him,” said Kate.

“ There ! ” said Don Ramon. “ Give the devil his dues.”
But there was something unyielding, unbending about
him. He laughed and spoke to the women only from a
surface self. Underneath, powerful and inscrutable, he made
no connection with them.

So it was at lunch. There was a flitting conversation,
with intervals of silence. It was evident that Ram6n was
thinking in another world, in the silence. And the ponder¬
ous stillness of his will, working in another sphere, made the
women feel overshadowed.

“ The Senora is like me, Ram6n,” said Dona Carlota.
“ She cannot bear the sound of that drum. Must it play
any more this afternoon ? ”

There was a moment’s pause, before he answered :

“ After four o’clock only.”

“ Must we have that noise to-day? ” Carlota persisted.

“ Why not to-day like other days 1 ” he said. But a
certain darkness was on his brow, and it was evident he
wanted to leave the presence of the two women.

“ Because the Senora is here : and I am here : and we
neither of us like it. And to-morrow the Senora will not be
here, and I shall be gone back to Mexico. So why not spare
us to-day 1 Surely you can show us this consideration.”

Ramon looked at her, and then at Kate. There was anger
in his eyes. And Kate could almost feel, in his powerful
chest, the big heart swelling with a suffocation of anger.
Both women kept mum. But it pleased them, anyhow,
that they could make him angry.

“ Why not row with Mrs Leslie on the lake ! ” he said,
with quiet control.

But under his dark brows was a level, indignant anger.

“ We may not want to,” said Carlota.

Then he did what Kate had not known, anyone to do
before. He withdrew his consciousness away from them as
they all three sat at table, leaving the two women, as it

180

THE PLUMED SERPENT

were, seated outside a closed door, with nothing more
happening. Kate felt for the time startled and forlorn, then
a slow anger burned in her warm ivory cheek.

“ Oh, yes,” she said. “ I can start home before then.”

“ No ! No ! ” said Doha Carlota, with a Spanish wail.
“ Don’t leave me. Stay with me till evening, and help me
to amuse Don Cipriano. He is coming to supper.”

CHAP : XI. LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT

When lunch was over, Ramon went to his room, to sleep
for an hour. It was a hot, still afternoon. Clouds were
standing erect and splendid, at the west end of the lake, like
messengers. Ramon went into his room and closed the
window-doors and the shutters, till it was quite dark, save
for yellow pencils of light that stood like substance on the
darkness, from the cracks of the shutters.

He took off his clothes, and in the darkness thrust his
clenched fists upwards above his head, in a terrible tension
of stretched, upright prayer. In his eyes was only darkness,
and slowly the darkness revolved in his brain, too, till he
was mindless. Only a powerful will stretched itself and
quivered from his spine in an immense tension of prayer.
Stretched the invisible bow of the body in the darkness
with inhuman tension, erect, till the arrows of the soul,
mindless, shot to the mark, and the prayer reached its goal.

Then suddenly, the clenched and quivering arms dropped,
the body relaxed into softness. The man had reached his
strength again. He had broken the cords of the world, and
was free in the other strength.

Softly, delicately, taking great care not to think, not to
remember, not to disturb the poisonous snakes of mental
consciousness, he picked up a thin, fine blanket, wrapped it
round him, and lay down on the pile of mats on the floor.
In an instant he was asleep.

He slept in complete oblivion for about an hour. Then
suddenly he opened his eyes wide. He saw the velvety
darkness, and the pencils of light gone frail. The sun had
moved. Listening, there seemed not a sound in the world :
there was no world.

Then he began to hear. He heard the faint rumble of
an ox wagon : then leaves in a wind : then a faint tapping
noise : then the creak of some bird calling.

He rose and quickly dressed in the dark, and threw open
the doors. It was mid-afternoon, with a hot wind blowing,
and clouds reared up dark and bronze in the west, the sun
hidden. But the rain would not fall yet. He took a big
straw hat and balanced it on his head. It had a round crest

181

182

THE PLUMED SERPENT

of black and white and blue feathers, like an eye, or a sun,
in front. He heard the low sound of women talking. Ah,
the strange woman ! He had forgotten her. And Carlota I
Carlota was here ! He thought of her for a moment, and of
her curious opposition. Then, before he could be angry,
he lifted his breast again in the black, mindless prayer, his
eyes went dark, and the sense of opposition left him.

He went quickly, driftingly along the terrace to the stone
stairs that led down to the inner entrance-way. Going
through to the courtyard, he saw two men packing bales of
bananas upon donkeys, under a shed. The soldiers were
sleeping in the zaguan. Through the open doors, up the
avenue of trees, he could see an ox-wagon slowly retreating.
Within the courtyard there was the sharp ringing of metal
hammered on an anvil. It came from a corner where was
a smithy, where a man and a boy were working. In another
shed, a carpenter was planing wood.

Don Ramon stood a moment to look around. This was
his own world. His own spirit was spread over it like a
soft, nourishing shadow, and the silence of his own power
gave it peace.

The men working were almost instantly aware of his
presence. One after the other the dark, hot faces glanced
up at him, and glanced away again. They were men, and
his presence was wonderful to them; but they were afraid
to approach him, even by staring at him. They worked
the quicker for having seen him, as if it gave them new life.

He went across to the smithy, where the boy was blowing
the old-fashioned bellows, and the man was hammering a
piece of metal, with quick, light blows. The man worked on
without lifting his head, as the patrAn drew near.

“ It is the bird? ” said Ram6n, standing watching the
piece of metal, now cold upon the anvil.

“ Yes, PatrAn ! It is the bird. Is it right? And the
man looked up with black, bright, waiting eyes.

The smith lifted with the tongs the black, flat, tongue¬
shaped piece of metal, and Ram6n looked at it a long time.

I put the wings on after,” said the smith.

Ramon traced with his dark, sensitive hand an
line, outside the edge of the iron. Three times he did it.
And the movement fascinated the smith.

“ a little more slender—so ! ” said Ramon.

LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT

183

“ y e s, Patrdn! Yes ! Yes ! I understand,” said the man
eagerly.

“ And the rest ? ”

“ Here it is ! ” The man pointed to two hoops of iron, one
smaller than the other, and to some flat discs of iron, tri¬
angular in shape.

** Lay them on the ground.”

The man put the hoops on the ground, one within the
other. Then, taking the triangular discs, he placed them
with quick, sensitive hands, so that their bases were upon
the outer circle, and their apices touched the inner. There
were seven. And thus they made a seven-pointed sun of
the space inside.

“ Now the bird,” said Ramon.

The man quickly took the long piece of iron : it was the
rudimentary form of a bird, with two feet, but as yet
without wings. He placed it in the centre of the inner
circle, so that the feet touched the circle and the crest of
the head touched opposite.

“ So ! It fits,” said the man.

Ram6n stood looking at the big iron symbol on the ground.
He heard the doors of the inner entrance : Kate and Carlota
walking across the courtyard.

“ I take it away? ” asked the workman quickly.

“ Never mind,” Ram6n answered quietly.

Kate stood and stared at the great wreath of iron on the
ground.

“ What is it? ” she asked brightly.

“ The bird within the sun.”

“ Is that a bird ? ”

“ When it has wings.”

“ Ah, yes ! When it has wings. And what is it for? ”

” For a symbol to the people.”

“ It is pretty.”

“ Yes.”

** Ramdn 1 ” said Doha Carlota, “ will you give me the
key for the boat? Martin will row us out.”

He produced the key from under his sash.

“ Where did you get that beautiful sash ? ” asked Kate.

It was the white sash with blue and brown-black bars,
and with a heavy red fringe.

This ? ” he said. “ We wove it Here.”

184

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ And did you make the sandals too ? ”

“ Yes ! They were made by Manuel. Later I will show
you.”

“ Oh, I should like to see !—They are beautiful, don’t you
think, Dona Carlota ? ”

“ Yes ! Yes ! It is true. But whether beautiful things
are wise things, I don’t know. So much I don’t know,
Senora. Ay, so much !—And you, do yon know what is
wise ?

“I? ” said Kate. “ I don’t care very much.”

“ Ah ! You don’t care !—You think Ramon is wise, to
wear the peasants’ clothes, and the huaraches ? ” For once
Dona Carlota was speaking in slow English.

“ Oh, yes ! ” cried Kate. “ He looks so handsome !—
Men’s clothes are so hideous, and Don Ramon looks so
handsome in those ! ” With the big hat poised on his head,
he had a certain air of nobility and authority.

“ Ah ! ” cried Dona Carlota, looking at the other woman
with intelligent, half-scared eyes, and swinging the key of
the boat. “ Shall we go to the lake ? ”

The two women departed. Ramon, laughing to himself,
went out of the gate and across the outer yard, to where a
big, barn-like building stood near the trees. He entered
the barn, and gave a low whistle. It was answered from the
loft above, and a trap-door opened. Don Ramon went up
the steps, and found himself in a sort of studio and car¬
penter’s shop. A fattish young man with curly hair, wearing
an artist’s blouse, and with mallet and chisels in his hand,

greeted him.

“ How is it going? ” asked Ramon.

“ Yes—well—” . T .

The artist was working on a head, in wood. It was larger
than life, conventionalised. Yet under the conventional
lines the likeness to Ram6n revealed itself.

“ Sit for me for half an hour,” said the sculptor.

Ramon sat in silence, while the other man bent over his
model, working in silent concentration. And ah the time,
Ramon sat erect, almost motionless, with a great stillness
of repose and concentration, thinking about nothing, but
throwing out the dark aura of power, in the spell of which

the artist worked.

“ That is enough,”

he said at last, quietly rising.

LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT

185

« But give me the pose before you go,” said the artist.

Ramon slowly took off his blouse-skirt, and stood with
naked torso, the sash with its blue and black bars tight
round his naked waist. For some moments he stood gather¬
ing himself together. Then suddenly, in a concentration of
intense, proud prayer, he flung his right arm up above his
head, and stood transfixed, his left arm hanging softly by
his side, the fingers touching his thigh. And on his face
that fixed, intense look of pride which was at once a prayer.

The artist gazed with wonder, and with an appreciation
touched with fear. The other man, large and intense, with
big dark eyes staring with intense pride, yet prayerful,
beyond the natural horizons, sent a thrill of dread and uf
joy through the artist. He bowed his head as he looked.

Don Ram6n turned to him.

“ Now you ! ” he said.

The artist was afraid. He seemed to quail. But he met
Ramdn’s eyes. And instantly, that stillness of concentration
came over him, like a trance. And then suddenly, out of the
trance, he shot his arm aloft, and his fat, pale face took on
an expression of peace, a noble, motionless transfiguration,
the blue-grey eyes calm, proud, reaching into the beyond,
with prayer. And though he stood in his blouse, with a
rather pudgy figure and curly hair, he had the perfect
stillness of nobility.

“ It is good 1 ” said Ram6n, bowing his head.

The artist suddenly changed; Ram6n held out his two
hands, the artist took them in his two hands. Then he lifted
Ramdn’s right hand and placed the back of it on his brow.

“ Adios ! ” said Ramon, taking his blouse again.

** Adios, senor ! ” said the artist.

And with a proud, white look of joy in his face, he turned
again to his work.

Ram6n visited the adobe house, its yard fenced with
cane and overshadowed by a great mango tree, where Manuel
and his wife and children, and two assistants, were spinning
and weaving. Two little girls were assiduously carding white
wool and brown wool under a cluster of banana trees : the

On tw a , youn S rnalden were spinning fine, fine thread.

j° o1 ’ red - and biue - and g**n. An d

Wy tnd h yy 00d Manuel and a yOUth - - a ™e a ‘ two

186

TIIE PLUMED SERPENT

“ How is it going? ” called Don Ramon.

“ Muy bien! Muy bien ! ” answered Manuel, with that
curious look of transfiguration glistening in his black eyes
and in the smile of his face. “ It is going well, very well,
Sefior! ”

Ramon paused to look at the fine white serape on the
loom. It had a zig-zag border of natural black wool and
blue, in little diamonds, and the ends a complication of
blackish and blue diamond-pattern. The man was just
beginning to do the centre—called the boca , the mouth :
and he looked anxiously at the design that was tacked to
the loom. But it was simple : the same as the iron symbol
the smith was making : a snake with his tail in his mouth,
the black triangles on his back being the outside of the
circle : and in the middle, a blue eagle standing erect, with
slim wings touching the belly of the snake with their tips,
and slim feet upon the snake, within the hoop.

Ilamon went back to the house, to the upper terrace, and
round to the short wing where his room was. He put a
folded serape over his shoulder, and went along the terrace.
At the end of this wing, projecting to the lake, was a square
terrace with a low, thick wall and a tiled roof, and a coral-
scarlet bignonia dangling from the massive pillars. The
terrace, or loggia, was strewn with the native palm-leaf
mats, petates, and there was a drum in one corner, with
the drum-stick upon it. At the far inner corner, went down
an enclosed stone staircase, with an iron door at the bottom.

Ramon stood a while looking out at the lake. The clouds
were dissolving again, the sheet of water gave off a whitish
light. In the distance he could see the dancing speck of a
boat, probably Martin with the two women.

He took off his hat and his blouse, and stood motionless,
naked to the waist. Then he lifted the drum-stick, and
after waiting a moment or two, to become still in soul, he
sounded the rhythmic summons, rather slow, yet with a
curious urge in its strong-weak, one-two rhythm. He had
got the old barbaric power into the drum.

For some time he stood alone, the drum, or tom-tom^
lifted by its thong against his legs, his right hand drumming,
his face expressionless. A man entered, bareheaded, running
from the inner terrace. He was in the white cotton clothes,
snow white, but with a dark serape folded on his shoulder.

LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT

187

and he held a key in his hand. He saluted Ramon by
putting the back of his right hand in front of his eyes for
a moment, then he went down the stone stairway and opened
the iron door.

Immediately men were coming up, all dressed alike, in
the white cotton clothes and the huaraches, each with a
folded serape over his shoulder. But their sashes were all
blue, and their sandals blue and white. The sculptor came
too, and Mirabal was there, also dressed in the cotton
clothes.

There were seven men, besides Ram6n. At the top of
the stairs, one after another, they saluted. Then they took
their serapes, dark brown, with blue eyes filled with white,
along the edges, and threw them down along the wall, their
hats beside them. Then they took off their blouses, and
(lung them on their hats.

Ram6n left the drum, and sat down on his own serape,
that was white with the blue and black bars, and the scarlet
fringe. The drummer sat down and took the drum. The
circle of men sat cross-legged, naked to the waist, silent.
Some were of a dark, ruddy coffee-brown, two were white,
Ram6n was of a soft creamy brown. They sat in silence for
a time, only the monotonous, hypnotic sound of the drum
pulsing, touching the inner air. Then the drummer began
to sing, in the curious, small, inner voice, that hardly
emerges from the circle, singing in the ancient falsetto of
the Indians :

“ Who sleeps—shall wake ! Who sleeps—shall wake !
VHio treads down the path of the snake shall arrive at the
place; in the path of the dust shall arrive at the place and
be dressed in the skin of the snake—”

One by one the voices of the men joined in, till they
were all singing in the strange, blind infallible rhythm of
the ancient barbaric world. And all in the small, inward
voices, as if they were singing from the oldest, darkest recess
ot the soul, not outwards, but inwards, the soul singing back

® ang * or . a time > in th e peculiar unison like a flock
AiS? 8 fly m one consciousness. And when the drum

the 1 T e , Dd ’ they a11 let their voices out, with

ne same broad, clapping sound in the throat.

ere was silence. The men turned, speaking to one

188

THE PLUMED SERPENT

another, laughing in a quiet way. But their daytime voices,
and their daytime eyes had gone.

Then Ramon’s voice was heard, and the men were
suddenly silent, listening with bent heads. Ramon sat with
his face lifted, looking far away, in the pride of prayer.

“ There is no Before and After, there is only Now,” he
said, speaking in a proud, but inward voice.

“ The great Snake coils and uncoils the plasm of his folds,
and stars appear, and worlds fade out. It is no more than
the changing and easing of the plasm.

“ 1 always am , says his sleep.

“ As a man in a deep sleep knows not, but is, so is the
Snake of the coiled cosmos, wearing its plasm.

“ As a man in a deep sleep has no to-morrow, no yester¬
day, nor to-day, but only is, so is the limpid, far-reaching
Snake of the eternal Cosmos, Now, and forever Now.

“ Now, and only Now, and forever Now.

“ But dreams arise and fade in the sleep of the Snake.

“ And worlds arise as dreams, and are gone as dreams.

“ And man is a dream in the sleep of the Snake.

“ And only the sleep that is dreamless breathes I Am!

“ In the dreamless Now, I Am.

“ Dreams arise as they must arise, and man is a dream

arisen. .

“ yut the dreamless plasm of the Snake is the plasm of a

man', of his body, his soul, and his spirit at one.

“ And the perfect sleep of the Snake I Am is the plasm of

a man, who is whole.

“ When the plasm of the body, and the plasm of the soul,
and the plasm of the spirit are at one, in the Snake / Am.

“ I am Now.

“ Was-not is a dream, and shall-be is a dream, like two
separate, heavy feet.

“ But Now, I Am. . , . , ,

“ The trees put forth their leaves in their sleep, and

flowering emerge out of dreams, into pure I Am.

ft The birds forget the stress of their dreams, and sing

aloud in the Now, I Am ! I Am ! .

“ For dreams have wings and feet, and journeys to take,

and efforts to make. __ . . . ,

“ But the glimmering Snake of the Now is wingless and

footless, and undivided, and perfectly coiled.

189

LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT

“ It is thus the cat lies down, in the coil of Now, and the
cow curves round her nose to her belly, lying down.

“ In the feet of a dream the hare runs uphill. But when
he pauses, the dream has passed, he has entered the timeless
Now, and his eyes are the wide I Am.

“ Only man dreams, dreams, and dreams, and changes
from dream to dream, like a man who tosses on his bed.

“ With his eyes and his mouth he dreams, with his hands
and his feet, with phallos and heart and belly, with body and
spirit and soul, in a tempest of dreams.

“ And rushes from dream to dream, in the hope of the
perfect dream.

“ But I, I say to you, there is no dream that is perfect, for
every dream has an ache and an urge, an urge and an ache.

“ And nothing is perfect, save the dr^am pass out into the
sleep, I Am.

“ When the dream of the eyes is darkened, and encom¬
passed with Now.

“ And the dream of the mouth resounds in the last I Am.

“ And the dream of the hands is a sleep like h bird on the
sea, that sleeps and is lifted and shifted, and knows not.

“ And the dreams of the feet and the toes touch the core
of the world, where the Serpent sleeps.

“ And the dream of the phallos reaches the great I Know
Not.

“ And the dream of the body is the stillness of a flower in
the dark.

“ And the dream of the soul is gone in the perfume of
Now.

“ And t^e dream of the spirit lapses, and lays down its
head, and is still with the Morning Star.

. “ For each dream starts out of Now, and is accomplished
m Now.

‘‘Inthe core of the flower, the glimmering, wakeless Snake.

* And what falls away is a dream, and what accrues is a
dream. There is always and only Now, Now and I Am.”

There was silence in the circle of men. Outside, the
sound of the bullock-wagon could be heard, and from the

•JL’ ..v ■ t amt kn °cking of oars. But the seven men sat
with their heads bent, in the semi-trance, listening inwardly.

ll^en the drum began softly to beat, as if of itself. And
a man began to sing, in a small voice :

190

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ The Lord of the Morning Star

Stood between the day and the night :

As a bird that lifts its wings, and stands
With the bright wing on the right
And the wing of the dark on the left,

The Dawn Star stood into sight.

Lo ! I am always here !

Far in the hollow of space
I brush the wing of the day
And put light an your face.

The other wing brushes the dark.

But I, I am always in place.

Yea, I am always here. I am Lord
In every way. And the lords among men
See me through the flashing of wings.

They see me and lose me again.

But lo ! I am always here
Within ken.

The multitudes see me not.

They see only the waving of wings,

The coming and going of things.

The cold and the hot.

But ye that perceive me between
The tremors of night and the day,

I make you the Lords of the Way
Unseen.

The path between gulfs of the dark and the steeps of the
li^h t *

The path like a snake that is gone, like the length of a

fuse to ignite , ,

The substance of shadow, that bursts and explodes into

sight.

I am here undeparting. I sit tight
Between wings of the endless flight,

At the depths of the peace and the fight.

LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT

101

Deep in the moistures of peace,

And far down the muzzle of the light
You shall find me, who am neither increase
Nor destruction, different quite.

I am far beyond

The horizons of love and strife.

Like a star, like a pond
That washes the lords of life.”

44 Listen ! ” said Ramon, in the stillness. 44 We will be
masters among men, and lords among men. But lords of
men, and masters of men we will not be. Listen ! We are
lords of the night. Lords of the day and night. Sons of
the Morning Star, sons of the Evening Star. Men of the
Morning and the Evening Star.

“ We are not lords of men : how can men make us lords ?
Nor are we masters of men, for men are not worth it.

“ But I am the Morning and the Evening Star, and lord of
the day and the night. By the power that is put in my
left hand, and the power that I grasp in my right, I am
lord of the two ways.

“ And my flower on earth is the jasmine flower, and in
heaven the flower Hesperus.

“ I will not command you, nor serve you, for the snake
goes crooked to his own house.

Yet I will be with you, so you depart not from your¬
selves.

There is no giving, and no taking. When the fingers that
give touch the fingers that receive, the Morning Star shines
at once, from the contact, and the jasmine gleams between
the hands. And thus there is neither giving nor taking, nor
hand that proffers nor hand that receives, but the star
between them is all, and the dark hand and the light hand
are invisible on each side. The jasmine takes the giving

and the receiving in her cup, and the scent of the onenesl
is fragrant on the air.

flower^" n ^ ther to give nor to receive, only let the jasmine

rcivedlromyou. ^ y0U “ “ £CeSS ’ let nothin E be
“ And reive nothing away. Not even the scent from the

1D2 THE PLUMED SERPENT

rose, nor the juice from the pomegranate, nor the warmth
from the fire.

“ But say to the rose : Lo ! I take you away from your
tree, and your breath is in my nostrils, and my breath is
warm in your depths. Let it be a sacrament between us.

And beware when you break the pomegranate; it is
sunset you take in your hands. Say : I am coming, come
thou. Let the Evening Star stand between us.

“ And when the fire burns up and the wind is cold and you
spread your hands to the blaze, listen to the flame saying :
Ah ! Is it thou ? Comest thou to me ? Lo, I was going the
longest journey, down the path of the greatest snake. But
since thou comest to me, I come to thee. And where thou
fallest into my hands, fall I into thine, and jasmine flowers
on the burning bush between us. Our meeting is the burn¬
ing bush, whence the jasmine flowers.

“ Reive nothing away, and let nothing be reived from
you. For reiver and bereaved alike break the root of the
jasmine flower, and spit upon the Evening Star.

“ Take nothing, to say : I have it! For you can possess
nothing, not even peace.

“ Nought is possessible, neither gold, nor land nor love,
nor life, nor peace, nor even sorrow nor death, nor yet
salvation.

** Say of nothing : It is mine.

“ Say only : It is with me.

“ For the gold that is with thee lingers as a departing
moon, looking across space thy way, saying : Lo ! We are
beholden of each other. Lo ! for this little while, to each

other thou and I are beholden.

“ And thy land says to thee : Ah, my child of a far-off
father ! Come, lift me, lift me a little while, that poppies
and wheat may blow on the level wind that moves between
my breast and thine ! Then sink with me, and w<> will make

one mound. , _ , _ u

“ And listen to thy love saying : Beloved ! I am mown by

thy sword like mown grass, and darkness is upon me, and
the tremble of the Evening Star. And to me thou art dark¬
ness and nowhere. Oh thou, when thou risest up and goest
thy way, speak to me, only say : The star rose between us.

“ And say to thy life : Am I thine ? Art thou mine. Am I
the blue curve of day around thine uncurved night ? Are

LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT

193

my eyes u.e twilbjt of neither of us, where the star hangs?
Is my upper bp the sunset and my lower lip the dawn, does
the star tremble inside my mouth ?

“ And say to thy peace : Ah ! risen, deathless star!
Already the waters c£ dawn sweep over thee, and wash me
away on the flood 1

“ And say to thy sorrow : Axe, thou art cutting me down !

“ Yet did a spark fly from out of thy edge and my
wound !

“ Cut then, while I cover my face, father of the Star.

“ And say to thy strength : Lo, the night is foaming up my
feet and my loins, day is foaming down from my eyes and
my mouth to the sea of my breast. Lo, they meet ! My
belly is a flood of power, that races in down the sluice of
bone at my back, and a star hangs low on the flood, over a
troubled dawn.

“ And say to thy death : Be it so! I, and my soul, we
come to thee, Evening Star. Flesh, go thou into the night.
Spirit, farewell, ’tis thy day. Leave me now, I go in last
nakedness now to the nakedest Star.”

CHAP : XU. THE FIRST WATERS.

The men had risen and covered themselves, and put on their
hats, and covered their eyes for a second, in salute before
Ramon, as they departed down the stone stair. And the
iron door at the bottom had clanged, the doorkeeper had
returned with the key, laid it on the drum, and softly,
delicately departed.

Still Ramon sat on his serape, leaning his naked shoulders
on the wall, and closing his eyes. He was tired, and in that
state of extreme separateness which makes it very hard to
come back to the world. On the outside of his ears he could
hear the noises of the hacienda, even the tinkle of tea-spoons,
and the low voice of women, and later, the low, labouring
sound of a motor-car struggling over the uneven road, then
swirling triumphantly into the courtyard.

It was hard to come back to these things. The noise of
them sounded on the outside of his ears, but inside them
was the slow, vast, inaudible roar of the cosmos, like m a
sea-shell. It was hard to have to bear the contact of com¬
monplace daily things, when his soul and body were naked
to the cosmos.

He wished they would leave him the veils of his isolation
awhile. But they would not : especially Carlota. She
wanted him to be present to her : in familiar contact.

She was calling : “ Ramon 1 Ramdn 1 Have you finished ?
Cipriano is here.” And even so, in her voice was fear, and
an over-riding temerity.

He pushed back his hair and rose, and very quickly went
out, as he was, with naked torso. He didn’t want to dress
himself into everyday familiarity, since his soul was un¬
familiar. . . '

They had a tea-table out on the terrace, and Cipriano, in
uniform, was there. He got up quickly, and came down the
terrace with outstretched arms, his black eyes gleaming
with an intensity almost like pain, upon the face of the
other man. And Ramdn looked back at him with wide, see¬
ing, yet unchanging eyes.

The two men embraced, breast to breast, and for a moment
Cipriano laid his little blackish hands on the naked shoulders

194

THE FIRST WATERS

195

of the oigger man, and for a moment was perfectly still on
his breast. Then very softly, he stood back and looked at
him, saying not a word.

Ramon abstractly laid his hand on Cipriano’s shoulder,
looking down at him with a little smile.

“ Que tal? ” he said, from the edge of his lips. “ How
goes it ? ”

“ Bien 1 Muy bien ! ” said Cipriano, still gazing into the
other man’s face with black, wondering, childlike, searching
eyes, as if he, Cipriano, were searching for himself , in
Ramon’s face. Ramon looked back into Cipriano’s black,
Indian eyes with a faint, kind smile of recognition, and
Cipriano hung his head as if to hide his face, the black hair,
which he wore rather long and brushed sideways, dropping
over his forehead.

The women watched in absolute silence. Then, as the
two men began slowly to come along the terrace to the tea-
table, Carlota began to pour tea. But her hand trembled so
much, the teapot wobbled as she held it, and she had to put
it down and clasp her hands in the lap of her white muslin
dress.

You rowed on the lake ? ” said Ramon abstractedly,
coming up.

“ It was lovely! ” said Kate. “ But hot when the sun
came.”

Ram6n smiled a little, then pushed his hand through his
hair. Then, leaning one hand on the parapet of the terrace
wall, he turned to look at the lake, and a sigh lifted his
shoulders unconsciously.

He stood thus, naked to the waist, his black hair ruffled
and splendid, his back to the women, looking out at the lake*
Cipriano stood lingering beside him*

Kate saw the sigh lift the soft, quiescent, cream-brown
shoulders. The soft, cream-brown skin of his back, of a
smooth, pure sensuality, made her shudder. The broad,
square, rather high shoulders, with neck and head rising
steep, proudly. The full-fleshed, deep chested, rich body

co„M “T , m « de h . e * {eel jU«y. In spite of herself, she
could not help imagining a knife stuck between those pure,

wmotSes^ ^ ° nly t0 brCak the arr °e ance of theh

That was it. His nakedness

was so aloof, far-off and intan-

196 THE PLUMED SERPENT

gible, in another day. So that to think of it was almost a
violation, even to look at it with prying eyes. Kate’s heart
suddenly shrank in her breast. This was how Salome had
looked at John. And this was the beauty of John, that he
had had; like a pomegranate on a dark tree in the distance,
naked, but not undressed ! Forever still and clothe-less,
and with another light about it, of a richer day than our
paltry, prying, sneak-thieving day.

The moment Kate had imagined a knife between his
shoulders, her heart shrank with grief and shame, and a
great stillness came over her. Better to take the hush into
one’s heart, and the sharp, prying beams out of one’s eyes.
Better to lapse away from one’s own prying, assertive self,
into the soft, untrespassing self, to whom nakedness is
neither shame nor excitement, but clothed like a flower in
its own deep, soft consciousness, beyond cheap awareness.

The evening breeze was blowing very faintly. Sailing boats
were advancing through the pearly atmosphere, far off, the
sun above had a golden quality. The opposite shore, twenty
miles away, was distinct, and yet there seemed an opal¬
escent, spume-like haze in the air, the same quality as in the
filmy water. Kate could see the white specks of the far-off
church towers of Tuliapan.

Below, in the garden below the house, was a thick grove
of mango trees. Among the dark and reddish leaves of the
mangos, scarlet little birds were bustling, like suddenly-
opening poppy-buds, and pairs of yellow birds, yellow under¬
neath as yellow butterflies, so perfectly clear, went skim¬
ming past. When they settled for a moment and closed
their wings, they disappeared, fer they were grey on top.
And when the cardinal birds settled, they too disappeared,
for the outside of their wings was brown, like a sheath.

“ Birds in this country have all their colour below,” said

Kate.

Ramon turned to her suddenly.

“ They say the word Mexico means below this! ” he said,

smiling, and sinking into a rocking chair.

Dona Carlota Lad made a great effort over herself, and
with eyes fixed on the tea-cups, she poured out the tea.
She handed him his cup without looking at him. She did
not trust herself to look at him. It made her tremble witn
a strange, hysterical anger : she, who had been married to

THE FIRST WATERS

197

him for years, and knew him, ah, knew him : and yet, and
yet, had not got him at all. None of him.

** Give me a piece of sugar, Carlota,” he said, in his quiet

voice.

But at the sound of it, his wife stopped as if some hand
had suddenly grasped her.

“ Sugar ! Sugar 1 ” she repeated abstractedly to herself.
Ramon sat forward in his rocking-chair, holding his cup
in his hand, his breasts rising in relief. And on his thighs
the thin linen seemed to reveal him almost more than his

own dark nakedness revealed him. She understood why
the cotton pantaloons were forbidden on the plaza. The
living flesh seemed to emanate through them.

He was handsome, almost horribly handsome, with his
black head poised as it were without weight, above his
darkened, smooth neck. A pure sensuality, with a powerful
purity of its own, hostile to her sort of purity. With the
blue sash round his waist, pressing a fold in the flesh, and
the thin linen seeming to gleam with the life of his hips and
his thighs, he emanated a fascination almost like a narcotic,

asserting his pure, fine sensuality against her. The strange,
soft, still sureness of him, as if he sat secure within his own
dark aura. And as if this dark aura of his militated against
her presence, and against the presence of his wife. He
emitted an effluence so powerful, that it seemed to hamper
her consciousness, to bind down her limbs.

And he was utterly still and quiescent, without desire,
soft and unroused, within his own ambiente . Cipriano going
the same, the pair of them so quiet and dark and heavy,
like a great weight bearing the women down.

Kate knew now how Salome felt. She knew now how John
the Baptist had been, with his terrible, aloof beauty, inac¬
cessible yet so potent.

Ah ! ” she said to herself. “ Let me close my eyes to
him, and open only my soul. Let me close my prying,
seeing eyes, and sit in dark stillness along with these two
men. They have got more than I, they have a richness that

1 T'lt 11 t J g0 ?~ They have g Qt rid of that itching of the eye,
and the desire that works through the eye. The itching,

una g inill g eye, 1 cursed with it, I am

Eve P Th UP m U 18 my curse of curse s, the curse of
iwe. The curse of Eve is upon me, my eyes are like hooks.

198

THE PLUMED SERPENT

my knowledge is like a fish-hook through my gills, pulling
me in spasmodic desire. Oh, who will free me from the
grappling of my eyes, from the impurity of sharp sight!
Daughter of Eve, of greedy vision, why don’t these men
save me from the sharpness of my own eyes ! ”

She rose and went to the edge of the terrace. Yellow as
daffodils underneath, two birds emerged out of their own
invisibility. In the little shingle bay, with a small break¬
water, where the boat was pulled up and chained, two men
were standing in the water, throwing out a big, fine round
net, catching the little silvery fish called charales, which
flicked out of the brownish water sometimes like splinters
of glass.

“ Ram6n ! ” Kate heard Dona Carlota’s voice. “ Won’t
you put something on ? ”

The wife had been able to bear it no more.

“ Yes ! Thank you for the tea,” said Ram6n, rising.

Kate watched him go down the terrace, in his own peculiar
silence, his sandals making a faint swish on the tiles.

“ Oh, Senora Caterina! ” came the voice of Carlota.
“ Come and drink your tea. Come 1 ”

Kate returned to the table, saying :

“ It seems so wonderfully peaceful here.”

“ Peaceful ! ” echoed Carlota. “ Ah, I do not find it
peaceful. There is a horrible stillness, which makes me
afraid.”

“ Do you come out very often ? ” said Kate, to Cipriano.

“Yes. Fairly often. Once a week. Or twice,” he replied,
looking at her with a secret consciousness which she could
not understand, lurking in his black eyes.

These men wanted to take her will away from her, as if
they wanted to deny her the light of day.

“ I must be going home now,” she said. “ The sun will

be setting.”

“ Ya va? ” said Cipriano, in his soft, velvety Indian voice,
with a note of distant surprise and reproach. “ Will you
go already?”

“ Oh, no, Senora ! ” cried Carlota. “ Stay until to¬
morrow. Oh, yes, stay until to-morrow, with me.”

“ They will expect us home,” she said, wavering.

“ Ah, no ! I can send a boy to say you will come to*
morrow. Yes? You will stay? Ah, good, good 1 ”

THE FIRST WATERS

199

And she laid her hand caressively on Kate’s arm, then
rose to hurry away to the servants.

Cipriano had taken out his cigarette case. He offered it
to Kate.

“ Shall I take one ? ” she said. “ It is my vice.”

“ Do take one,” he said. “ It isn’t good, to be perfect.”

“ It isn’t, is it? ” she laughed, puffing her cigarette.

“ Now would you call it peace ? ” he asked with incom¬
prehensible irony.

“ Why? ” she cried.

“ Why do white people always want peace? ” he asked.

“ Surely peace is natural! Don’t all people want it ?
Don’t you ? ”

“ Peace is only the rest after war,” he said. “ So it is
not more natural than fighting : perhaps not so natural.”

“ No, but there is another peace : the peace that passes
all understanding. Don’t you know that ? ”

“ I don’t think I do,” he said.

” What a pity! ” she cried.

“ Ah ! ” he said. “ You want to teach me 1 But to me
it is different. Each man has two spirits in him. The one
is like the early morning in the time of rain, very quiet,
and sweet, moist, no?—with the mocking-bird singing, and
birds flying about, very fresh. And the other is like the
dry season, the steady, strong hot light of the day, which
seems as if it will never change.”

“ But you like the first better,” she cried.

” I don’t know ! ” he replied. “ The other lasts longer.”

” I am sure you like the fresh morning better,” she said.

” I don’t know ! I don’t know ! ” He smiled a crumpled
sort of smile, and she could tell he really did not know. “ In
the first time, you can feel the flowers on their stem, the
stem very strong and full of sap, no ?—and the flower open¬
ing on top like a face that has the perfume of desire. And
a woman might be like that.—But this passes, and the sun
begins to shine very strong, very hot, no? Then every¬
thing inside a man ohanges, goes dark, no ! And the flowers
crumple up, and the breast of a man becomes like a steel
mirror. And he is all darkness inside, coiling and uncoiling
like a snake. All the flowers withered up on shrunk stems,
no? And then women don’t exist for a man. They dis¬
appear like the flowers.”

200

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ And then what does he want? ” said Kate.

“ I don’t know. Perhaps he wants to be a very big man,
and master all the people.”

“ Then why doesn’t he? ” said Kate.

He lifted his shoulders.

“ And you,” he said to her. “ You seem to me like that
morning I told you about.”

“ I am just forty years old,” she laughed shakily.

Again he lifted his shoulders.

“ It doesn’t matter,” he said. “ It is the same. Your
body seems to me like the stem of the flower I told you
about, and in your face it will always be morning, of the
time of the rains.”

“ Why do you say that to me? ” she said, as an in¬
voluntary strange shudder shook her.

“ Why not say it! ” he replied. “ You are like the cool
morning, very fresh. In Mexico, we are the end of the hot
dry day.”

He watched her, with a strange lingering desire in his
black eyes, and what seemed to her a curious, lurking sort
of insolence. She dropped her head to hide from him, and
rocked in her chair.

“ I would like to marry you,” he said; “ if ever you will
marry. I would like to marry you.”

“ I don’t think I shall ever marry again,” she flashed,
her bosom heaving like suffocation, and a dark flush suffusing
over her face, against her will.

“ Who knows ! ” said he.

Ramdn was coming down the terrace, his fine white serape
folded over his naked shoulder, with its blue-and-dark
pattern at the borders, and its long scarlet fringe dangling
and swaying as he walked. He leaned against one of the
pillars of the terrace, and looked down at Kate and Cipriano.
Cipriano glanced up with that peculiar glance of primitive
intimacy.

“ I told the Senora Caterina,” he said, “ if ever she
wanted to marry a man, she should marry me.”

“ It is plain talk,” said Ram6n, glancing at Cipriano with

the same intimacy, and smiling.

Then he looked at Kate, with a slow smile in his brown
eyes, and a shadow of curious knowledge on his face. He
folded his arms over his breast, as the natives do when it is

THE FIRST WATERS

201

cold and they are protecting themselves; and the cream-
brown flesh, like opium, lifted the bosses of his breast, full
and smooth.

“ Don Cipriano says that white people always want
peace,” she said, looking up at Ramon with haunted eyes.
“ Don’t you consider yourselves white people ? ” she asked,
with a slight, deliberate impertinence.

“ No whiter than we are,” smiled Ram6n. “ Not lily-
white, at least.”

“ And don’t you want peace ? ” she asked.

“ I ? I shouldn’t think of it. The meek have inherited the
earth, according to prophecy. But who am I, that I should
envy them their peace ! No, Senora. Do I look like a
gospel of peace?—or a gospel of war either? Life doesn’t
split down that division, for me.”

“ I don’t know what you want,” said she, looking up at
him with haunted eyes.

“ We only half know ourselves,” he replied, smiling with
changeful eyes. “ Perhaps not so much as half.”

There was a certain vulnerable kindliness about him, which
made her wonder, startled, if she had ever realised what
real fatherliness meant. The mystery, the nobility, the in¬
accessibility, and the vulnerable compassion of man in his
separate fatherhood.

“ You don’t like brown-skinned people ? ” he asked her
gently.

“ 1 th ipk it is beautiful to look at,” she said. “ But
with a faint shudder—“ I am glad I am white.”

You feel there could be no contact? ” he said, simnly.
Yes ! ” she said. “ I mean that.”

“ It is as you feel,” he said.

And as he said it, she knew he was more beautiful to her

than any blond white man, and that, in a remote, far-off

way, the contact with him was more precious than anv
contact she had known. J

But then, though he cast over her a certain shadow, he
would never encroach on her, he would never seek any close
ntact. It was the incompleteness in Cipriano that sought
her out, and seemed to trespass on her.

donrwIlT 8 Ram6 °' s T ° ice > Carlota appeared uneasily in a

aS£T ™ „ f'T 8 1111 ff eSk En g‘ ish - sV disappeared
again, on a gust of anger. But after a little while, she came

G*

202

THE PLUMED SERPENT

once more, with a little vase containing the creamy-coloured,
thick flowers that are coloured like freesias, and that smell
very sweet.

“ Oh, how nice ! ” said Kate. “ They are temple flowers !
In Ceylon the natives tiptoe into the little temples and lay
one flower on the table at the foot of the big Buddha statues.
And the tables of offering are all covered with these flowers,
all put so neatly. The natives have that delicate oriental
way of putting things down.”

“ Ah ! ” said Carlota, setting the vase on the table. “ T
did not bring them for any gods, especially strange ones. I
brought them for you, Senora. They smell so sweet.”

“ Don’t they ! ” said Kate.

The two men went away, Ramon laughing.

“ Ah, Senora ! ” said Carlota, sitting down tense at the
table. “ Could you follow Ram6n ? Could you give up the
Blessed Virgin ?—I could sooner die ! ”

“ Ha ! ” said Kate, with a little weariness. “ Surely we
don’t want any more gods.”

“ More gods, Senora ! ” said Doha Carlota, shocked.

“ But how is it possible !—Don Ramon is in mortal sin.”

Kate was silent.

“ And he wants to lead more and more people into the
same,” continued Carlota. “ It is the sin of pride. Men
wise in their own conceit!—The cardinal sin of men. Ah,
I have told him.—And I am so glad, Senora, that you feel
as I feel. I am so afraid of American women, women like
that. They wish to have men’s minds, so they accept all
the follies and wickedness of men.—You are Catholic,
Senora ? ”

“ I was educated in a convent,” said Kate.

“ Ah, of course ! Of course !—Ah, Senora, as if a woman
who had ever known the Blessed Virgin could ever part from
her again. Ah, Senora, what woman would have the heart
to put Christ back on the Cross, to crucify him twice ! But
men, men ! This Quetzalcoatl business ! What buffoonery,
Senora; if it were not horrible sin ! And two clev«r, well-
educated men ! Wise in their own conceit! ”

“ Men usually are,” said Kate.

It was sunset, with a big level cloud like fur overhead, only
the sides of the horizon fairly clear. The sun was not visible.
It had gone down in a thick, rose-red fume behind the wavy

THE FIRST WATERS

203

ridge of the mountains. Now the hills stood up bluish, all
the°air was a salmon-red flush, the fawn water had pinkish
ripples. Boys and men, bathing a little way along the shore,
were the colour of deep flame.

Kate and Carlota had climbed up to the azotea, the flat
roof, from the stone stairway at the end of the terrace.
They could see the world : the hacienda with its courtyard
like a fortress, the road between deep trees, the black mud
huts near the broken highroad, and little naked fires already
twinkling outside the doors. All the air was pinkish, melting
to a lavender blue, and the willows on the shore, in the pink
light, were apple-green and glowing. The hills behind rose
abruptly, like mounds, dry and pinky. Away in the distance,
down the lake, the two white obelisk towers of Sayula glinted
among the trees, and villas peeped out. Boats were creeping
into the shadow, from the outer brightness of the lake.

And in one of these boats was Juana, being rowed, dis¬
consolate, home.

CHAP : J

[. THE FIRST RAIN.

ill

Ramon and Cipriano were out by the lake. Cipriano also had
changed into the white clothes and sandals, and he looked
better than when in uniform.

“ I had a talk with Montes when he came to Guadala¬
jara, ” Cipriano said to Ramon. Montes was the President
of the Republic.

“ And what did he say? ”

“ He is careful. But he doesn’t like his colleagues. 1
think he feels lonely. I think he would like to know you
better.”

“ Why? ”

“ Perhaps that you could give him your moral support.
Perhaps that you might be Secretary, and President when
Montes* term is up.”

“ I like Montes,” said Ramon. “ He is sincere and
passionate. Did you like him ? ”

“ Yes ! ” said Cipriano. “ More or less. He is suspicious,
and jealous for fear anyone else might want to share in his
power. He has the cravings of a dictator. He wanted to
find out if I would stick to him.”

“ You let him know you would? ”

“ I told him that all I cared for was for you and for
Mexico.” /

“ What did he say? ”

“ Well, he is no fool. He said : ‘ Don Ram6n sees the
world with different eyes from mine. Who knows which
of us is right. I want to save my country from poverty and
unenlightenment, he wants to save its soul. I say, a hungry
and ignorant man has no place for a soul. An empty belly
grinds upon itself, so does an empty mind, and the soul
doesn’t exist. Don Ramon says, if a man has no soul, it
doesn’t matter whether he is hungry or ignorant. Well, he
can go his way, and I mine. We shall never hinder one
another, I believe. I give you my word I won’t have him
interfered with. He sweeps the patio and I sweep the
street.’ ”

“ Sensible ! ” said Ram6n. “ And honest in his con¬
victions.”

204

T HE FIRST RAIN

205

“ Why should you not be Secretary in a few months
time ? And follow to the Presidency ?” said Cipriano.

“ You know I don’t want that. I must stand in another
world, and act in another world.— Politics must go their own
way, and society must do as it will. Leave me alone,
Cipriano. I know you want me to be another Porfirio
Diaz, or something like that. But for me that would be
failure pure and simple.”

Cipriano was watching Ram6n with black, guarded eyes,
in which was an element of love, and of fear, and of trust,
but also incomprehension, and the suspicion that goes with
incomprehension.

“ I don’t understand, myself, what you want,” he
muttered.

“ Yes, yes, you do. Politics, and all this social religion
that Montes has got is like washing the outside of the egg, to
make it look clean. But I, myself, I want to get inside the
egg, right to the middle, to start it growing into a new bird.
Ay 1 Cipriano 1 Mexico is like an old, old egg that the bird of
Time laid long ago; and she has been sitting on it for
centuries, till it looks foul in the nest of the world. But
still, Cipriano, it is a good egg. It is not addled. Only
the spark of fire has never gone into the middle of it, to start
it.—Montes wants to clean the nest and wash the egg. But
meanwhile, the egg will go cold and die. The more you
save these people from poverty and ignorance, the quicker
they will die : like a dirty egg that you take from under the
hen-eagle, to wash it. While you wash the egg, it chills and
dies. Poor old Montes, all his ideas are American and
European. And the old Dove of Europe will never hatch
the egg of dark-skinned America. The United States can’t
die, because it isn’t alive. It is a nestful of china eggs, made
of pot. So they can be kept clean.—But here, Cipriano,
here, let us hatch the chick before we start cleaning up the
nest.”

Cipriano hung his head. He was always testing Raradn,
to see if he could change him. When he found he couldn’t,
then he submitted, and new little fires of joy sprang up in
him. But meanwhile, he had to try, and try again.

“ ^ is no good, trying to mix the two things. At this
stage of affairs, at least, they won’t mix. We have to shut
our eyes and sink down, sink away from the surface, away,

206

THE PLUMED SERPENT

like shadows, down to the bottom. Like the pearl divers.
But you keep bobbing up like a cork.”

Cipriano smiled subtly. He knew well enough.

“ We’ve got to open the oyster of the cosmos, and get
our manhood out of it. Till we’ve got the pearl, we are
only gnats on the surface of the ocean,” said Ramon.

“ My manhood is like a devil inside me,” said Cipriano.

“ It’s very true,” said Ramon. “ That’s because the old
oyster has him shut up, like a black pearl. You must let
him walk out.”

“ Ramon,” said Cipriano, “ Wouldn’t it be good to be
a serpent, and be big enough to wrap one’s folds round the
globe of the world, and crush it like that egg?”

Ramon looked at him and laughed.

“ I believe we could do that,” said Cipriano, a slow smile
curling round his mouth. “ And wouldn’t it be good ?”

Ramon shook his head, laughing. t

“ There would be one good moment, at least,” he said.

“ Who asks for more !” said Cipriano.

A spark flashed out of Ramon’s eyes too. Then he
checked himself, and gathered himself together.

“ What would be the good !” he said heavily. “ If the
egg was crushed, and we remained, what could we do but
go howling down the empty passages of darkness. What’s
the good, Cipriano?”

Ramon got up and walked away. The sun had set, the
night was falling. And in his soul the great, writhing anger
was alive again. Carlota provoked it into life : the two
women seemed to breathe life into the black monster of his
inward rage, till it began to lash again. And Cipriano stirred
it up till it howled with desire.

“ My manhood is like a demon howling inside me,” said
Ramon to himself, in Cipriano’s words.

And he admitted the justice of the howling, his manhood
being pent up, humiliated, goaded with insult inside him.
And rage came over him, against Carlota, against Cipriano,
against his own people, against all mankind, till he was filled
with rage like the devil.

His people would betray him, he knew that. Cipriano
would betray him. Given one little vulnerable chink, they
would pierce him. They would leap at the place out of
nowhere, like a tarantula, and bite in the poison.

THE FIRST RAIN

207

While ever there was one little vulnerable chink. And
what man can be invulnerable ?

He went upstairs by the outer stairway, through the iron
door at the side of the house, under the heavy trees, up to
his room, and sat on his bed. The night was hot, heavy,
and ominously still.

“ The waters are coming,” he heard a servant say. He
shut the doors of his room till it was black dark inside. Then
he threw aside his clothing, saying : I put off the world with
my clothes. And standing nude and invisible in the centre
of his room he thrust his clenched fist upwards, with all his
might, feeling he would break the walls of his chest. And hi»
left hand hung loose, the fingers softly curving downwards.

And tense like the gush of a soundless fountain, he thrust
up and reached down in the invisible dark, convulsed with
passion. Till the black waves began to wash over his
consciousness, over his mind, waves of darkness broke over
his memory, over his being, like an incoming tide, till at last
it was full tide, and he trembled, and fell to rest. Invisible
in the darkness, he stood soft and relaxed, staring with wide
eyes at the dark, and feeling the dark fecundity of the inner
tide washing over his heart, over his belly, his mind dissolved
away in the greater, dark mind, which is undisturbed by
thoughts.

He covered his face with his hands, and stood still, in pure
unconsciousness, neither hearing nor feeling nor knowing,
like a dark sea-weed deep in the sea. With no Time and
no World, in the deeps that are timeless and worldless.

Then when his heart and his belly were restored, his mind
began to flicker again softly, like a soft flame flowing with¬
out departing.

So he wiped his face with his hands, and put his serapc
over his head, and, silent inside an aura of pain, he went out
and took the drum, carrying it downstairs.

Martin, the man who loved him, was hovering in the
zaguan.

“ Ya y Patron ?” he said.

“ Ya 1” said Ram6n

J 11 ® “^ors, where a lamp was burning in the

big, dark kitchen, and ran out again with an armful of the
woven straw mats.

“ Where, Patron?” he said.

208

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Ram6n hesitated in the centre of the courtyard, and
looked at the sky.

“ Viene el agua? ” he said.

“ Creo que si, Patrdn.”

They went to the shed where the bananas had been packed
and carried away on donkeys. There the man threw down
the petates. Ramon arranged them. Guisleno ran with
canes. He was going to make lights, the simplest possible.
Three pieces of thick cane,tied at the neck with a cord,stood
up three-legged, waist high. In the three-pronged fork at
the top he laid a piece of flat, slightly hollow lava stone.
Then he came running from the house with a bit of burning
ocote wood. Three or four bits of ocote, each bit no bigger
than a long finger, flickered and rose in quick flames from the
stone, and the courtyard danced with shadow.

Ram6n took off his serape, folded it, and sat upon it.
Guisleno lit another tripod-torch. Ram6n sat with his back
to the wall, the fire-light dancing on his dark brows, that
were sunk in a sort of frown. His breast shone like gold
in the flame. He took the drum and sounded the summons,
slow, monotonous, rather sad. In a moment two or three
men came running. The drummer came, Ram6n stood up
and handed him the drum. He ran with it to the great
outer doorway, and out into the dark lane, and there
sounded the summons, quick, sharp.

Ramon put on his serape, whose scarlet fringe touched his
knees, and stood motionless, with ruffled hair. Round his
shoulders went the woven snake, and his head was through
the middle of the blue, woven bird.

Cipriano came from the house. He was wearing a serape
all scarlet and dark brown, a great scarlet sun at the centre,
deep scarlet zigzags at the borders, and dark brown fringe
at his knees. He came and stood at Ramdn’s side, glancing
up into Rambn’s face. But the other man’s brows were low,
his eyes were fixed in the darkness of the sheds away across
the courtyard. He was looking into the heart of th® world;
because the faces of men, and the hearts of men are helpless
quicksands. Only in the heart of the cosmos man can look
for strength. And if he can keep his soul in touch with the
heart of the world, then from the heart of the world new
blood will beat in strength and stillness into him, fulfilling
his manhood.

THE FIRST RAIN

209

c.

Cipriano turned his black eyes to the courtyard. His
soldiers had drawn near, in a little group. Three or four
men were standing in dark serapes, round the fire.
Cipriano stood brilliant like a cardinal bird, next to Ramon.
Even his sandals were bright, sealing-wax red, and his
loose linen trousers were bound at the ankles with red
and black bands. His face looked very dark and ruddy
in the firelight, his little black tuft of a beard hung odd and
devilish, his eyes were glittering sardonically. But he caught
Ramon’s hand in his small hand, and stood holding it.

The peons were coming through the entrance-way,
balancing their big hats. Women were hurrying barefoot,
swishing their full skirts, carrying babies inside the dark
wrap of their rebozos, children lunning after. They all
clustered towards the flame-light, like wild animals gazing
in at the circle of men in dark sarapes, Ram6n, magnificent
in his white and blue and shadow, poising his beautiful
head, Cipriano at his side like a glittering cardinal bird.

Carlota and Kate emerged from the inner doorway of the
house. But there Carlota remained, wrapped in a black
silk shawl, seated on a wooden bench where the soldiers
usually sat, looking across at the ruddy flare of light, the
circle of dark men, the tall beauty of her husband, the
poppy-petal glitter of red, of Cipriano, the group of little,
dust-coloured soldiers, and the solid throng of peons and
women and children, standing gazing like animals. While
through the gate men still came hurrying, and from out¬
side, the drum sounded, and a high voice sang again and
again :

“ Someone will enter between the gates.

Now, at this moment, Ay !

See the light on the man that waits.

Shall you? Shall I?

Someone will come to the place of fire.

Now, at this moment. Ay !

And hark to the words of their heart’s desire.

Shall you? Shall I?

Someone will knock when the door is shut.

Ay ! in a moment, Ay 1

HeaT a voice saying : I know you not!

Shall you? Shall I?

210

THE PLUMED SERPENT

There was a queer, wild yell each time on the Ay! and
like a bugle refrain : Shall you ? Shall /? It made
Carlota shiver.

Kate, wrapping her yellow shawl round her, walked
slowly towards the group.

The drum outside gave a rapid shudder, and was
finished. The drummer came in, the great doors were
shut and barred, the drummer took his place in the ring
of standing men. A dead silence supervened.

Ramon continued to gaze from under lowered brows,
into space. Then in a quiet, inward voice, he said :

“ As I take off this cover, I put away the day that is
gone from upon me.”

He took off his serape, and stood with it over his arm.
All the men in the circle did the same, till they stood with
naked breasts and shoulders, Cipriano very dark and strong¬
looking, in his smallness, beside Ramon.

“ I put away the day that is gone,” Ram6n continued,
in the same still, inward voice, “ and stand with my heart
uncovered in the night of the gods.”

Then he looked down at the ground.

“ Serpent of the earth,” he said; “ snake that lies in
the fire at the heart of the world, come ! Come ! Snake
of the fire of the heart of the world, coil like gold round
my ankles, and rise like life around my knee, and lay your
head against my thigh. Come, put your head in my
hand, cradle your head in my fingers, snake of the deeps.
Kiss my feet and my ankles with your mouth of gold, kiss
my knees and my inner thigh, snake branded with flame
and shadow, come ! and rest you head in my finger-basket !
So !”

The voice was soft and hypnotic. It died upon a still¬
ness. And it seemed as if really a mysterious presence
had entered unseen from the underworld. It seemed to
the peons as if really they saw a snake of brilliant gold and
living blackness softly coiled around Ram6n’s ankle and
knee, and resting its head in his fingers, licking his palm
with forked tongue.

He looked out at the big, dilated, glittering eyes of his
people, and his own eyes were wide and uncanny.

“ I tell you,” he said, “ and I tell you truly. At the
heart of this earth sleeps a great serpent, in the midst of

THE FIRST RAIN

211

fire. Those that go down in mines feel the heat and the
sweat of him, they feel him move. It is the living fire
of the earth, for the earth is alive. The snake of the
world is huge, and the rocks are his scales, trees grow
between them. I tell you the earth you dig is alive as
a snake that sleeps. So vast a serpent you walk on, this
lake lies between his folds as a drop of rain in the folds of
a sleeping rattlesnake. Yet he none the less lives. The
earth is alive.

“ And if he died, we should all perish. Only his living
keeps the soil sweet, that grows you maize. From the
roots of his scales we dig silver and gold, and the trees
have root in him, as the hair of my face has root in my lips.

“ The earth is alive. But he is very big, and we are very
small, smaller than dust. But he is very big in his life,
and sometimes he is angry. These people , smaller than
dust , he says, they stamp on me and say I am dead. Even
to their asses they speak t and shout Harreh ! Burro ! But
to me they speak no word. Therefore l will turn against
them, like a woman who lies angry with her man in bed,
and eats away his spirit with her anger, turning her back
to him.

“ That is what the earth says to us. He sends sorrow into
our feet, and depression into our loins.

“ Because as an angry woman in the house can make a
man heavy, taking his life from him, so the earth can make
us heavy, make our souls cold, and our life dreary in our
feet.

“ Speak then to the snake of the heart of the world, put oil
on your fingers and lower your fingers for him to taste the
oil of the earth, and let him send life into your feet and
ankles and knees, like sap in the young maize pressing
against the joints and making the milk of the maize bud
among its hair.

“ From the heart of the earth man feels his manhood rise
up in him, like the maize that is proud, turning its green
leaves outwards. Be proud like the maize, and let your
roots go deep, deep, for the rains are here, and it is time
for us to be growing in Mexico.”

Ram6n ceased speaking, the drum softly pulsed. All

tl If ring were looking down at the earth and
softly letting their left hands hang.

212

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Carlota, who had not been able to hear, drifted up to
Kate’s side, spell-bound by her husband. Kate uncon¬
sciously glanced down at the earth, and secretly let her
fingers hang softly against her dress. But then she was
afraid of what might happen to her, and she caught her
hand up into her shawl.

Suddenly the drum began to give a very strong note,
followed by a w r eak : a strange, exciting thud.

Everybody looked up. Ramon had flung his right arm
tense into the air, and was looking up at the black dark
sky. The men of the ring did the same, and the naked
arms were thrust aloft like so many rockets.

“ Up Up 1 Up !” said a wild voice.

“ Up ! Up !” cried the men of the ring, in a wild
chorus.

And involuntarily the men in the crowd twitched, then
shot their arms upwards, turning their faces to the dark
heavens. Even some of the women boldly thrust up
their naked arms, and relief entered their hearts as they
did so.

But Kate would not lift her arm.

There was dead silence, even the drum was silent. Then
the voice of Ram6n was heard, speaking upwards to the
black sky :

“ Your big wings are dark, Bird, you are flying low to¬
night. You are flying low over Mexico, wc shall soon feel
the fan of your wings on our face.

“ Ay, Bird ! You fly about where you will. You fly past
the sturs, and you perch on the sun. You fly out of sight,
and are gone beyond the white river of the sky. But you
come back like the ducks of the north, looking for water
and winter.

“ You sit in the middle of the sun, and preen your
feathers. You crouch in the river of stars, and make the
star-dust rise around you. You fly away into the deepest
hollow place of the sky, whence there seems no return.

“ You come back to us, and hover overhead, and we

feel your wings fanning our faces—”

Even as he spoke the wind rose, in sudden gusts, and a
door could be heard slamming in the house, with a shiver¬
ing of glass, and the trees gave off a tearing sound.

“ Come then. Bird of the great sky !” Ramon called wildly.

THE FIRST RAIN

218

“ Come I Oh Bird, settle a moment on my wrist, over my
head, and give me power of the sky, and wisdom. Oh
Bird 1 Bird of all the wide heavens, even if you drum
your feathers in thunder, and drop the white 6nake of lire
from your beak back to the earth again, where he can run
in, deep down the rocks again, home : even if you come as
the Thunderer, come 1 Settle on my wrist a moment, with
the clutch of the power of thunder, and arch your wings
over my head, like a shadow of clouds; and bend your
breast to my brow, and bless me with the sun. Bird, roam¬
ing Bird of the Beyond, with thunder in your pinions and
the snake of lightning in your beak, with the blue heaven
in the socket of your wings and cloud in the arch of your
neck, with sun in the burnt feathers of your breast and
power in your feet, with terrible wisdom in your flight,
swoop to me a moment, swoop 1”

Sudden gusts of wind tore at the little fires of flame, till
they could be heard to rustle, and the lake began to speak
in a vast hollow noise, beyond the tearing of trees. Distant
lightning was beating far off, over the black hills.

Ram6n dropped his arm, which had been bent over his
head. The drum began to beat. Then he said :

“ Sit down a moment, before the Bird shakes water out
of his wings. It will come soon. Sit down.”

There was a stir. Men put their serapes over their faces,
women clutched their rebozos tighter, and all sat down on
the ground. Only Kate and Carlota remained standing,
on the outer edge. Gusts of wind tore at the flames, the
men put their hats on the ground in front of them.

“ The earth is alive, and the sky is alive ,” said Ram6n in
his natural voice, “ and between them, we live. Earth has
kissed my knees, and put strength in my belly. Sky
has perched on my wrist, and sent power into my breast.

“ But as in the morning the Morning-star stands between
earth and sky, a star can rise in us, and stand between the
heart and the loins.

“ That is the manhood of man, and for woman, her
womanhood.

** ^ ou are no * yet men. And women, you are not vet
women. J

“ You run about and toss about and die, and still you
nave not found the star of your manhood rise within you.

214

THE PLUMED SERPENT

the starj of your womanhood shine out serene between
your breasts, women.

“ I tell you, for him that wishes it, the star of his man¬
hood shall rise within him, and he shall be proud, and
perfect even as the Morning-star is perfect.

“ And the star of a woman’s womanhood can rise at last,
from between the heavy rim of the earth and the lost grey
void of the sky.

“ But how? How shall we do it? How shall it be?

“ How shall we men become Men of the Morning Star?
And the women the Dawn-Star Women?

“ Lower your fingers to the caress of the Snake of the earth.

“ Lift your wrist for a perch to the far-lying Bird.

“ Have the courage of both, the courage of lightning and
the earthquake.

“ And wisdom of both, the wisdom of the snake and the
eagle.

“ And the peace of both, the peace of the serpent and the
sun.

“ And the power of both, the power of the innermost

earth and the outermost heaven.

« But on your brow, Men ! the undimmed Morning Star,
that neither day nor night, nor earth nor sky can swallow

and put out.

“ And between your breasts, Women ! the Dawn-Star,

that cannot be dimmed. .

“ And your home at last is the Morning Star. Neither

heaven nor earth shall swallow you up at the last, but you
shall pass into the place beyond both, into the bright star
that is lonely yet feels itself never alone.

“ The Morning Star is sending you a messenger, a god
who died in Mexico. But he slept his sleep, and the invisible
Ones washed his body with water of resurrection. So he
has risen, and pushed the stone from the mouth of the tomb,
and has stretched himself. And now he is striding across
the horizons even quicker than the great stone from the
tomb is tumbling back to the earth, to crush those that

rolled it up. ,,

“ The Son of the Star is coming back to the Sons of Men,

with big, bright strides.

“ Prepare to receive him. And wash yourselves, and put
oil on your hands and your feet, on your mouth and eyes

THE FIRST RAIN

215

and ears and nostrils, on your breast and navel and on the
secret places of your body, that nothing of the dead days,
no dust of skeletons and evil things may pass into you and
make you unclean.

“ Do not look with the eyes of yesterday, nor like yester¬
day listen, nor breathe, nor smell, nor taste, nor swallow
food and drink. Do not kiss with the mouths of yester¬
day, nor touch with the hands, nor walk with yesterday’s
feet. And let your navel know nothing of yesterday, and
go into your women with a new body, enter the new body
in her.

“ For yesterday’s body is dead, and carrion, the Xopilote
is hovering above it.

“ Put yesterday’s body from off you, and have a new
body. Even as your God who is coming. Quetzalcoatl is
coming with a new body, like a star, from the shadows of
death.

“ Yes, even as you sit upon the earth this moment, with
the round of your body touching the round of the earth,
say : Earth 1 Earth 1 you are alive as the globes of my
body are alive. Breathe the kiss of the inner earth upon
me, even as I sit upon you.

“ And so, it is said. The earth is stirring beneath you,
the sky is rushing its wings above. Go home to your
homes, in front of the waters that will fall and cut you
off forever from your yesterdays.

“ Go home, and hope to be Men of the Morning Star,
Women of the Star of Dawn.

“ You are not yet men and women- 9 *

He rose up and waved to the people to be gone. And
in a moment they were on their feet, scurrying and hasten¬
ing with the quiet Mexican hurry, that seems to run low
down upon the surface of the earth.

The black wind was all loose in the sky, tearing with
/"thin shriek of torn fabrics, in the mango trees. Men
held their big hats on their heads and ran with bent knees,
their serapes blowing. Women clutched their rebozos
tighter and ran barefoot to the zaguan.

- The big doors were open, a soldier stood with a gun
across his back, holding a hurricane lamp. And the people
tied hke ghosts through the doors, and away up the black
lane like bits of paper veering away into nothingness, blown

216 THE PLUMED SERPENT

out of their line of flight. In a moment, they had all silently
gone.

Martin barred the great doors. The soldier put down his
lamp on the wooden bench, and he and his comrades sat
huddled in their dark shawls, in a little bunch like toadstools
in the dark cavern of the zaguan. Already one had curled
himself up on the wooden bench, wrapped like a snail in his
blanket, head disappeared.

“ The water is coming I” cried the servants excitedly,
as Kate went upstairs with Doha Carlota.

The lake was quite black, like a great pit. The wind
suddenly blew with violence, with a strange ripping sound
in the mango trees, as if some membrane in the air were
being ripped. The white-flowered oleanders in the garden
below leaned over quite flat, their white flowers ghostly,
going right down to the earth, in the pale beam of the lamp—
like a streeet lamp—that shone on the wall at the front
entrance. A young palm-tree bent and spread its leaves
on the ground. Some invisible juggernaut car rolling in the
dark over the outside world.

Away across the lake, south-west, lightning blazed and
ran down the sky like some portentous writing. And soft,
velvety thunder broke inwardly, strangely.

“ It frightens me ! ” cried Dona Carlota, putting her
hand over her eyes and hastening into a far corner of the

bare salon. . .

Cipriano and Kate stood on the terrace, watching the

coloured flowers in the pots shake and fly to bits, disappear¬
ing up into the void of darkness. Kate clutched her shawl.
But the wind suddenly got under Cipriano’s blanket, and
lifted it straight up in the air, then dropped it in a scarlet
flare over his head. Kate watched his deep, strong Indian
chest lift as his arms quickly fought to free his head. How
dark he was, and how primitively physical, beautiful and
deep-breasted, with soft, full flesh ! But all, as it were, for
himself. Nothing that came forth from him to meet with
one outside. All oblivious of the outside, all for himself.

“ Ah ! the water ! ” he cried, holding down his serape.

The first great drops were flying darkly at the flowers,
like arrows. Kate stood back into the doorway of the salon.
A pure blaze of lightning slipped three-fold above the black
hills, seemed to stand a moment, then slip back mto the dark.

THE FIRST RAIN

217

Down came the rain with a smash, as if some great vessel
had broken. With it, came a waft of icy air. And all the
time, first in one part of the sky, then in another, in quick
succession the blue lightning, very blue, broke out of heaven
and lit up the air for a blue, breathless moment, looming
trees and ghost of a garden, then was gone, while thunder
dropped and exploded continually.

Kate watched the dropping masses of water in wonder.
Already, in the blue moments of lightning, she saw the
garden below a pond, the walks were rushing rivers. It was
cold. She turned indoors.

A servant was going round the rooms with a lantern, to
look if scorpions were coming out. He found one scuttling
across the floor of Kate’s room, and one fallen from the
ceiling beams on to Carlota’s bed.

They sat in the salon in rocking chairs, Carlota and Kate,
and rocked, smelling the good wetness, breathing the good,
chilled air. Kate had already forgotten what really chill
air was like. She wrapped her shawl tighter round her.

“ Ah, yes, you feel cold ! You must take care in the
nights, now. Sometimes in the rainy season the nights are
very cold. You must be ready with an extra blanket.
And the servants, poor things, they just lie and shudder,
and they get up in the morning like corpses.— But the sun
soon warms them again, and they seem to think they must
bear what comes. So they complain sometimes, but still
they don’t provide.”

The wind had gone, suddenly. Kate was uneasy, uneasy,
with the smell of water, almost of ice, in her nostrils, and
her blood stiH hot and dark. She got up and went again
to the terrace. Cipriano was still standing there, motionless
and inscrutable, like a monument, in his red and dark
serape.

The rain was abating. Down below in the garden, two

barefooted women-servants were running through the water,

in the faint light of the zaguan lamp, running across the

garden and putting ollas, and square gasoline cans under the

arching spouts of water that seethed down from the roof,

then darting away while they filled, then struggling in with

the frothy vessel. It would save making trips to the lake,
for water. &

" Wka* do y°u think of us ? ” Cipriano said to her.

218

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ It is strange to me,” she replied, wondering and a little
awed by the night.

“ Good, no? ” he said, in an exultant tone.

“ A little scaring,” she replied, with a slight laugh.

** When you are used to it,” he said, “ it seems natural,
no ? It seems natural so—as it is. And when you go to a
country like England, where all is so safe and ready-made,
then you miss it. You keep saying to yourself : ‘ What am
I missing? What is it that is not here? * ”

He seemed to be gloating in his native darkness. It was
curious, that though he spoke such good English, it seemed
always foreign to her, more foreign than Dona Carlota’s
Spanish.

“ I can’t understand that people want to have everything,
all life, no?—so safe and ready-made as in England and
America. It is good to be awake. On the qui vive, no? ”

“ Perhaps,” she said.

“ So I like it,” he said, “ when Ram6n tells the people
the earth is alive, and the sky has a big bird in it, that you
don’t see. I think it is true. Certainly ! And it is good
to know it, because then one is on the qui vive , no ?

“ But it’s tiring to be always on the qui vive” she said.

“ Why? Why tiring? No, I think, on the contrary, it
is refreshing.—Ah, you should marry, and live in Mexico.
At last, I am sure, you would like it. You would keep
waking up more and more to it.”

t* Or else going more and more deadened,” she said.
“ That is how most foreigners go, it seems to me.”

“ Why deadened ? ” he said to her. “ I don’t under¬
stand. Why deadened? Here you have a country where
night is night, and rain comes down and you know it.
And you have a people with whom you must be on the
qui vive all the time, all the time. And that is very good,
no? You don’t go sleepy. Like a pear ! Don’t you say a
pear goes sleepy, no ?—cuando se echa a perder r

** And here you have also Ram6n. How does Ramon
seem to you? ”

“ I don’t know. I don’t want to say anything. But 1
do think he is almost too much : too far.—And I don t

think he is Mexican.” „ _ . . „

“ Why not? Why not Mexican? He is Mexican.

THE FIRST RAIN

219

“ Not as you are.”

“ How not as I am ? He is Mexican.”

“ He seems to me to belong to the old, old Europe,”
she said.

“ And he seems to me to belong to the old, old Mexico—
and also to the new,” he added quickly.

“ But you don’t believe in him.”

“ How ? ”

“ You—yourself. You don’t believe in him. You think
it is like everything else, a sort of game. Everything is a
sort of game, a put-up job, to you Mexicans. You don’t
really believe, in anything.”

“ How not believe? I not believe in Ramon?—Well,
perhaps not, in that way of kneeling before him and spread¬
ing out my arms and shedding tears on his feet. But I—I
believe in him, too. Not in your way, but in mine. I tell
you why. Because he has the power to compel me. If he
hadn’t the power to compel me, how should I believe ? ”

“ It is a queer sort of belief that is compelled,” she said.

“ How else should one believe, except by being compelled ?
I like Ram6n for that, that he can compel me. When I
grew up, and my godfather could not compel me to believe,
I was very unhappy. It made me very unhappy.—But
Ram6n compels me, and that is very good. It makes me
very happy, when I know I can’t escape. It would make
you happy too.”

“ To know I could not escape from Don Ram6n ? ” she
said ironically.

“ Yes, that also. And to know you could not escape
from Mexico. And even from such a man, as me.”

She paused in the dark before she answered, sardonically :

I don’t think it would make me happy to feel I couldn’t
escape from Mexico. No, I feel, unless I was sure I could
get out any day, I couldn’t bear to be here.”

In her mind she thought: And perhaps Ram6n is the
only one I couldn’t quite escape from, because he really
touches me somewhere inside. But from you, you little
Cipriano, I should have no need even to escape, because I
could not be caught by you.

“ Ah ! ” he said quickly. “ You think so. But then you
don t know. You can only think with American thoughts,
it is natural. From your education, you have only American

220

THE PLUMED SERPENT

thoughts, U.S.A. thoughts, to think with. Nearly all women
are like that : even Mexican women of the Spanish-Mexican
class. They are all thinking nothing but U.S.A. thoughts,
because those are the ones that go with the way they dress
their hair. And so it is with you. You think like a modern
woman, because you belong to the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic
world, and dress your hair in a certain way, and have money,
and are altogether free.—But you only think like this be¬
cause you have had these thoughts put in your head, just
as in Mexico you spend centavos and pesos, because that
is the Mexican money you have put in your pocket. It’s
what they give you at the bank.—So when you say you are
free, you are not free. You are compelled all the time to
be thinking U.S.A. thoughts— compelled , I must say. You
have not as much choice as a slave. As the peons must
eat tortillas, tortillas, tortillas, because there is nothing else,
you must think these U.S.A. thoughts, about being a woman
and being free. Every day you must eat those tortillas,
tortillas.—Till you don’t know how you would like some¬
thing else.”

“ What else should I like? ” she said, with a grimace
at the darkness.

“ Other thoughts, other feelings.—You are afraid of such
a man as me, because you think I should not treat you
a Vamiricaine. You are quite right. I should not treat
you as an American woman must be treated. Why should
I? I don’t wish to. It doesn’t seem good to me.”

t* You would treat a woman like a real old Mexican,
would you? Keep her ignorant, and shut her up? ” said

Kate sarcastically. ^ . .

“ j could not keep her ignorant if she did not start
ignorant. But what more I had to teach her wouldn’t be
in the American style of teaching.”

“ What then ? ”

“ Quien sabe ! £a reste h voir.” # t

“ Et continuera a y rester,” said Kate, laugmng.

CHAP : XIV. HOME TO SAYULA.

The morning came perfectly blue, with a freshness in the
air and a blue luminousness over the trees and the distant
mountains, and birds so bright, absolutely like new-opened
buds sparking in the air.

Cipriano was returning to Guadaljara in the automobile,
and Carlota was going with him. Kate would be rowed
home on the lake.

To Ramon, Carlota was still, at times, a torture. She
seemed to have the power still to lacerate him, inside his
bowels. Not in his mind or spirit, but in his old emotional,
passional self : right in the middle of his belly, to tear him
and make him feel he bled inwardly.

Because he had loved her, he had cared for her : for the
affectionate, passionate, whimsical, sometimes elfish creature
she had been. He had made much of her, and spoiled her,
for many years.

But all the while, gradually, his nature was changing
inside him. Not that he ceased to care for her, or wanted
other women. That she could have understood. But inside
him was a slow, blind imperative, urging him to cast his
emotional and spiritual and mental self into the slow furnace,
and smelt them into a new, whole being.

But he had Carlota to reckon with. She loved him, and
that, to her, was the outstanding factor. She loved him,
emotionally. And spiritually, she loved mankind. And
mentally, she was sure she was quite right.

Yet as time went on, he had to change. He had to cast
that emotional self, which she loved, into the furnaoe, to be
smelted down to another self.

And she felt she was robbed, cheated. Why couldn’t he
go on being gentle, good, and loving, and trying to make the
whole world more gentle, good, and loving ?

He couldn’t, because it was borne in upon him that the
world had gone as far as it could go in the good, gentle,
and loving direction, and anything further in that line
meant perversity. So the time had come for the slow, great
change to something else—what, he didn’t know.

The emotion of love, and the greater emotion of liberty

221

222 THE PLUMED SERPENT

for mankind seemed to go hard and congeal upon him, like
the shell on a chrysalis. It was the old caterpillar stage
of Christianity evolving into something else.

But Carlota felt this was all she had, this emotion of
love, for her husband, her children, for her people, for
the animals and birds and trees of the world. It was her
all, her Christ, and her Blessed Virgin. How could she
let it go ?

So she continued to love him, and to love the world,
steadily, pathetically, obstinately and devilishly. She
prayed for him, and she engaged in works of charity.

But her love had turned from being the spontaneous
flow, subject to the unforseen comings and goings of the
Holy Ghost, and had turned into will. She loved now with
her will : as the white world now tends to do. She became
filled with charity : that cruel kindness.

Her winsomeness and her elvishness departed from her,
she began to wither, she grew tense. And she blamed
him, and prayed for him. Even as the spontaneous mystery
died in her, the will hardened, till she was nothing but a
will : a lost will.

She soon succeeded in drawing the life of her young boys
all to herself, with her pathos and her subtle will. Ram6n
was too proud and angry to fight for them. They were her
children. Let her have them.

They were the children of his old body. His new body
had no children : would probably never have any.

“ But remember,” he said to her, with southern logic,
«« you do not love, save with your will. I don’t like the
love you have for your god : it is an assertion of your own
will. I don’t like the love you have for me : it is the same.
I don’t like the love you have for your children. If ever I
see in them a spark of desire to be saved from it, I shall
do my best to save them. Meanwhile have your love, have
your will. But you know I dislike it. I dislike your in¬
sistence. I dislike your monopoly of one feeling, I dislike
your charity works. I disapprove of the whole trend of your
life. You are weakening and vitiating the boys. You do
not love them, you are only putting your love-will over
them. One day they will turn and hate you for it. Re¬
member I have said this to you.”

Dona Carlota had trembled in every fibre of her body.

HOME TO SAYULA

223

under the shock of this. But she went away to the chapel
of the Annunciation Convent, and prayed. And, praying for
his soul, she seemed to gain a victory over him, in the odour
of sanctity. She came home in frail, pure triumph, like a
flower that blooms on a grave : his grave.

And Ramon henceforth watched her in her beautiful,
rather fluttering, rather irritating gentleness, as he watched
his closest enemy.

Life had done its work on one more human being,
quenched the spontaneous life and left only the will. Killed
the god in the woman, or the goddess, and left only charity,
with a will.

“ Carlota,” he had said to her, “ how happy you would
be if you could wear deep, deep mourning for me.—I shall
not give you this happiness.**

She gave him a strange look from her hazel-brown eyes.

“ Even that is in the hands of God,** she had replied,
as she hurried away from him.

And now, on this morning after the first rains, she came
to the door of his room as he was sitting writing. As
yesterday, he was naked to the waist, the blue-marked
sash tied round his middle confined the white linen, loose
trousers—like big, wide pyjama trousers crossed in front and
tied round his waist.

“ May I come in ? ” she said nervously.

“ Do ! ” he replied, putting down his pen and rising.

There was only one chair—he was offering it her, but she
sat down on the unmade bed, as if asserting her natural
right. And in the same way she glanced at his naked breast
—as if asserting her natural right.

“ I am going with Cipriano after breakfast,** she said.

“ Yes, so you said.**

** The boys will be home in three weeks.**

" Yes.**

“ Don’t you want to see them ? **

“ If they want to see me.**

“ I am sure they do.**

“ Then bring them here.**

“ Do you think it is pleasant for me? *’ she
her hands.

said, clasping

“ J ou do not make it pleasant for me, Carlota.’*

How can I ? You know I think you are wrong. When

224

THE PLUMED SERPENT

I listened to you last night—there is something so beautiful
in it all—and yet so monstrous. So monstrous !—Oh ! I
think to myself : What is this man doing? This man of all
men, who might be such a blessing to his country and
mankind—”

“ Well,” said Ram6n. “ And what is he instead ? ”

“ You know ! You know ! I can’t bear it.—It isn 9 t for
you to save Mexico, Ramon. Christ has already saved it.”

“ It seems to me not so.”

“ He has 1 He has ! And He made you the wonderful
being that you are, so that you should work out the salva¬
tion, in the name of Christ and of love. Instead of which—”

“ Instead of which, Carlota, I try something else.—But
believe me, if the real Christ has not been able to save
Mexico,—and He hasn’t—then I am sure, the white Anti-
Christ of Charity, and socialism, and politics, and reform,
will only succeed in finally destroying her. That, and that
alone makes me take my stand.—You, Carlota, with your
charity works and your pity: and men like Benito Juarez,
with their Reform and their Liberty : and the rest of the
benevolent people, politicians and socialists and so lortn,
surcharged with pity for living men, in their mouths, but
really with hate—the hate of the materialist have-nots for
the materialist haves: they are the Anti-Christ. The old
world, that’s just the world. But the new world, that
wants to save the People, this is the Anti-Christ. This is
Christ with real poison in the communion cup.—And for
this reason I step out of my ordinary privacy and in¬
dividuality. I don’t want everybody poisoned. About the
great mass I don’t care. But I don’t want everybody
poisoned.”

“ How can you be so sure that you yourself are not a
poisoner of the people ?—I think you are.”

“ Think it then. I think of you, Carlota, merely that
you have not been able to come to your complete, final
womanhood : which is a different thing from the old woman¬
hoods.”

Womanhood is always the same.

“ Ah, no it isn’t I Neither is manhood.”

“ But what do you think you can do ? What do you
think this Quetzalcoatl nonsense amounts to? ”

“ Quetzalcoatl is just a living word, for these people, no-

HOME TO SAYULA

225

more. All I want them to do is to find the beginnings of
the way to their own manhood, their own womanhood.
Men are not yet men in full, and women are not yet women.
They are all half and half, incoherent, part horrible, part
pathetic, part good creatures. Half arrived.—I mean
you as well, Carlota. I mean all the worlu.—But these
people don’t assert any righteousness of their own, these
Mexican people of ours. That makes me think that grace
is still with them. And so, having got hold of some kind of
clue to my own whole manhood, it is part of me now to
try with them.”

“ You will fail.”

“ I shan’t. Whatever happens to me, there will be a new
vibration, a new call in the air, and a new answer inside
some men.”

“ They will betray you.—Do you know what even your
friend Toussaint said of you?—Ram6n Carrasco’s future is
just the past of mankind.”

** A great deal of it is the past. Naturally Toussaint secs
that part.”

“ But the boys don’t believe in you. Instinctively, they

disbelieve. Cyprian said to me, when I went to see him :

‘ Is father doing any more of that silly talk about old gods

coming back, mother? I wish he wouldn’t. It would be

pretty nasty for us if he got himself into the newspapers
with it.* ”

Ramdn laughed.

Little boys,” he said, “ are like little gramaphones.

they only talk according to the record that’s put into
them.”

“ You don’t believe out of the mouths of babes and suck¬
lings,” said Carlota bitterly.

Why Carlota, the babes and sucklings don’t get much
chance. Their mothers and their teachers turn them into
uttle gramaphones from the first, so what can they do, but
say and feel according to the record the mother and teacher
puts into them. Perhaps in the time of Christ, babes and
suckhngs were not so perfectly exploited by their elders.”

suddenly, however, the smile went off his face. He rose
U P> 4 and pointed to the door.

“ away,” he said in a low tone. " Go awav 1 I have
smelt the smell of your spirit long enough.” *

226

THE PLUMED SERPENT

She sat on the bed, spell-bound, gazing at him with
frightened, yet obstinate, insolent eyes, wincing from his
outstretched arm as if he had threatened to strike her.

Then again the fire went out of his eyes, and his arm sank.
The still, far-away look came on his face.

“ What have I to do with it !” he murmured softly.

And taking up his blouse and his hat, he went silently out
on to the terrace, departing from her in body and in soul.
She heard the soft swish cf his sandals. She heard the faint
resonance of the iron door to the terrace, to which he alone
had access. And she sat like a heap of ash on his bed, ashes
to ashes, burnt out, with only the coals of her will Still
smouldering.

Her eyes were very bright, as she went to join Kate and
Cipriano.

After breakfast, Kate was rowed home down the lake.
She felt a curious depression at leaving the hacienda : as if,
for her, life now was there, and not anywhere else.

Her own house seemed empty, banal, vulgar. For the
first time in her life, she felt the banality and emptiness even
of her own milieu. Though the Casa de las Cuentas was
not purely her own milieu.

“ Ah Nina, how good ! How good that you have come !
Ay, in the night, how much water ! Much ! Much ! But
you were safe in the hacienda, Nina. Ah, how nice, that
hacienda of Jamiltepec. Such a good man, Don Ramon—
isn’t he, Nina? He cares a great deal for his people. And
the Senora, ah, how sympathetic she is 1”

Kate smiled and was pleasant. But she felt more like
going into her room and saying : For God’s sake, leave me

alone, with your cheap rattle.

She suffered again from the servants. Again that quiet,
subterranean insolence against life, which seems to belong to
modern life. The unbearable note of flippant jeering, which
is underneath almost all modern utterance. It was under¬
neath Juana’s constant cry.—Nina ! Nina !

At meal-times Juana would seat herself on the ground at
a little distance from Kate, and talk, talk- in her rapid
mouthfuls of conglomerate words with trailing, wistful end¬
ings : and all the time watch her mistress with those black,
unseeing eyes on which the spark of light would stir with
the peculiar slow, malevolent jeering of the Indian.

HOME TO SAYULA

227

Kate was not rich—she had only her moderate income.

“ Ah, the rich people— !” Juana would say.

“ I am not rich,” said Kate.

“ You are not rich, Nina?” came the singing, caressive
bird-like voice : “ Then, you are poor?”—this was inde¬

scribable irony.

“ No, I am not poor either. I am not rich, and I sun
not poor,” said Kate.

“ You are not rich, and you are not poor, Nina !” repeated
Juana, in her bird-like voice, that covered the real bird’s
endless, vindictive jeering.

For the words meant nothing to her. To her, who had
nothing, could never have anything, Kate was one of that
weird class, the rich. And, Kate felt, in Mexico it was
a crime to be rich, or to be classed with the rich. Not
even a crime, really, so much as a freak. The rich class
was a freak class, like dogs with two heads or calves with
five legs. To be looked upon, not with envy, but with the
slow, undying antagonism and curiosity which “ normals ”
have towards “ freaks.” The slow, powerful, corrosive
Indian mockery, issuing from the lava-rock Indian nature,
against anything which strives to be above the grey, lava-
rock level.

“ Is it true, Nina, that your country is through there ?”
Juana asked, jabbing her finger downward, towards the
bowels of the earth.

“ Not quite !” said Kate. “ My country is more there—”
and she slanted her finger at the earth’s surface.

Ah—that way !” said Juana. And she looked at Kate
with a subtle leer, as if to say : what could you expect from
people who came out of the earth sideways, like sprouts of
camote !

And is it true, that over there, there are people with

only one eye—here !” Juana punched herself in the middle
of her forehead.

No. That isn’t true. That is just a story.”

“ Ah!” said Juana. “ Isn’t it true ! Do you know ?

Have you been to the country where they are, these
people?”

*! \ es >” said Kate * ** I have been to all the countries,
and there are no such people.”

“ Verdad ! Verdad !” breathed Juana, awestruck. “ You

%

228

THE PLUMED SERPENT

have been to all the countries, and there are no such people !
—But in your country, they are all gringos ? Nothing but
gringos?**

She meant, no real people and salt of the earth like her
own Mexican self.

“ They are all people like me,” said Kate coldly.

“ L >ke you, Nina? And they all talk like you?”

“ Yes ! Like me.”

” And there are many?”

“ Many ! Many !”

” Look now !” breathed Juana, almost awestruck to think
that there could be whole worlds of these freak, mockable
people.

And Concha, that young, belching savage, would stare
through her window-grating at the strange menagerie of the
Nina and the Nina’s white visitors. Concha, slapping
tortillas, was real.

Kate walked down towards the kitchen. Concha was
slapping the masa, the maize dough which she bought in the
plaza at eight centavos a kilo.

“ Nina I” she called in her raucous voice. “ Do you eat
tortillas ?”

“ Sometimes,” said Kate.

“ Eh ?” shouted the young savage.

“ Sometimes.”

“ Here ! Eat one now !” And Concha thrust a brown
paw with a pinkish palm, and a dingy-looking tortfl:*, at
Kate.

“ Not now,” said Kate.

She disliked the heavy plasters that tasted of lime.

“ Don’t you want it? Don’t you eat it?” said Concha,
with an impudent, strident laugh. And she flung the re¬
jected tortilla on the little pile.

She was one of those who won’t eat bread : say they don’t
like it, that it is not food.

Kate would sit and rock on her terrace, while the sun
poured in the green square of the garden, the palm-tree
spread its great fans translucent at the light, the hibiscus
dangled great double-red flowers, rosy red, from its very
dark tree, and the dark green oranges looked as if they were
sweating as they grew.

Came lunch time, madly hot : and greasy hot soup, greasy

HOME TO SAYTJLA

229

rice, splintery little fried fishes, bits of boiled meat and
boiled egg-plant vegetables, a big basket piled with mangoes,
papayas, zapotes—all the tropical fruits one did not want,
in hot weather.

And the barefoot little Maria, in a limp, torn, faded red
frock, to wait at table. She was the loving one. She would
stand by Juana as Juana bubbled with talk, like dark
bubbles in her mouth, and she would stealthily touch Kate’s
white arm; stealthily touch her again. Not being rebuked,
she would stealthily lay her thin little black arm on Kate’s
shoulder, with the softest, lightest touch imaginable, and
her strange, wide black eyes would gleam with ghostly black
beatitude, very curious, and her childish, pock-marked,
slightly imbecile face would take on a black, arch,
beatitudinous look. Then Kate would quickly remove the
thin, dark, pock-marked arm, the child would withdraw half
a yard, the beatitudinous look foiled, but her very black eyes
still shining exposed and absorbedly, in a rapt, reptilian sort
of ecstasy.

Till Concha came to hit her with her elbow, making some
brutal, savage remark which Kate could not understand. So
the glotzing black eyes of the child would twitch, and Maria
would break into meaningless tears, Concha into a loud,
brutal, mocking laugh, like some violent bird. And Juana
interrupted her black and gluey flow of words to glance at
her daughters and throw out some ineffectual remark.

The victim, the inevitable victim, and the inevitable
victimiser.

The terrible, terrible hot emptiness of the Mexican morn-
ings, the weight of black ennui that hung in the air 1 It made
Kate feel as if the bottom had fallen out of her soul. She
went out to the lake, to escape that house, that family.

Since the rains, the trees in the broken gardens of the
lake front had flamed into scarlet, and poured themselves
out into lavender flowers. Rose red, scarlet and lavender,
quick, tropical flowers. Wonderful splashes of colour. But
*kat was all : splashes 1 They made a splash, like fireworks.

And Kate thought of the black-thorn puffing white, in
the early year, in Ireland, and hawthorn with coral grains,
m a damp still morning in the lanes, and foxgloves by the

are rock, and tufts of ling and heather, and a ravel of hare-
ls. And a terrible, terrible longing for home came over

230

THE PLUMED SERPENT

her. To escape from these tropical brilliancies and mean¬
inglessnesses.

In Mexico, the wind was a hard draught, the rain was a
sluice of water, to be avoided, and the sun hit down on one
with hostility, terrific and stunning. Stiff, dry, unreal
land, with sunshine beating on it like metal. Or blackness
and lightning and crashing violence of rain.

No lovely fusion, no communion. No beautiful mingling
of sun and mist, no softness in the air, never. Either hard
heat or hard chill. Hard, straight lies and zigzags, wound¬
ing the breast. No soft, sweet smell of earth. The smell
of Mexico, however subtle, suggested violence and things
in chemical conflict.

And Kate felt herself filled with an anger of resentment.
She would sit under a willow tree by the lake, reading a Pio
Baroja novel that was angry and full of No ! No ! No !—ich
bin der Geist der stets verneint! But she herself was so
much angrier and fuller of repudiation than Pio Baroja.
Spain cannot stand for No ! as Mexico can.

The tree hung fleecy above her. She sat on the warm
sand in the shadow, careful not to let even her ankles lie in
the biting shine of the sun. There was a faint, old smell
of urine. The lake was so still and filmy as to be almost
invisible. In the near distance, some dark women were
kneeling on the edge of the lake, dressed only in their long
wet chemises in which they had bathed. Some were wash¬
ing garments, some were pouring water over themselves,
scooping it up in gourd scoops and pouring it over their
black heads and ruddy-dark shoulders, in the intense pres¬
sure of the sunshine. On her left were two big trees, and a
cane fence, and little straw huts of Indians. There the
beach itself ended, and the little Indian plots of land went
down to the lake-front.

Glancing around in the great light, she seemed to be
sitting isolated in a dark core of shadow, while the world
moved in inconsequential specks through the hollow glare.
She noticed a dark urchin, nearly naked, marching with
naked, manly solemnity down to the water’s edge. He
would be about four years’ old, but more manly than an
adult man. With sex comes a certain vulnerability which
these round-faced, black-headed, stiff-backed infant men
have not got. Kate knew the urchin. She knew his

281

HOME TO SAYULA

tattered rag of a red shirt, and the weird rags that were his
little man’s white trousers. She knew his black round bead,
his stiff, sturdy march of a walk, his round eyes, and his
swift, scuttling run, like a bolting animal.

“ What’s the brat got,” she said to herself, gazing at the
moving little figure within the great light.

Dangling from his tiny outstretched arm, held by the
webbed toe, head down and feebly flapping its out-sinking
wings, was a bird, a water-fowl. It was a black mud-chick
with a white bar across the under-wing, one of the many dark
fowl that bobbed in little flocks along the edge of the sun-
stunned lake.

The urchin marched stiffly down to the water’s edge, hold¬
ing the upside-down bird, that seemed big as an eagle in
the tiny fist. Another brat came scuttling after. The
two infant men paddled a yard into the warm, lapping water,
under the great light, and gravely stooping, like old men,
set the fowl on the water. It floated, but could hardly
paddle. The lift of the ripples moved it. The urchins
dragged it in, like a rag, by a string tied to its leg.

So quiet, so still, so dark, like tiny, chubby little infant
men, the two solemn figures with the rag of a bird !

Kate turned uneasily to her book, her nerves on edge.
She heard the splash of a stone. The bird was on the
water, but apparently the string that held it by the leg was
tied to a stone. It lay wavering, a couple of yards out.
And the two little he-men, with sober steadfastness and a
quiet, dark lust, were picking up stones, and throwing them
with the fierce Indian aim at the feebly fluttering bird : right
down upon it. Like a little warrior stood the mite in the red
rag, his arm upraised, to throw the stone with all his might
down on the tethered bird.

In a whiff, Kate was darting down the beach.

“ Ugly boys ! Ugly children ! Go ! Go away, ugly children,
ugly boys 1 ” she said on one breath, with quiet intensity.

The round-headed dot gave her one black glance from his
manly eyes, then the two of them scuttled up the beach into
invisibility.

Kate went into the water, and lifted the wet, warm bird.
The bit of coarse fibre-string hung from its limp, greenish,
water-fowl’s ankle. It feebly tried to bite her.

She rapidly stepped out of the water and stood in the sun

232

THE PLUMED SERPENT

to unfasten the string. The bird was about as big as a
pigeon. It lay in her hand with the absolute motionless¬
ness of a caught wild thing.

Kate stooped and pulled off her shoes and stockings. She
looked round. No sign of life from the reed huts dark in
the shadow of the trees. She lifted her skirts and staggered
out barefoot in the hot shallows of the water, almost falling
on the cruel stones under the water. The lake-side was
very shallow. She staggered on and on, in agony, holding
up her skirts in one hand, holding the warm, wet, motionless
bird in the other. Till at last she was up to her knees.
Then she launched the greeny-black bird, and gave it a little
push to the uprearing expanse of filmy water, that was
almost dim, invisible with the glare of light.

It lay wet and draggled on the pale, moving sperm of
the water, like a buoyant rag.

“ Swim then I Swim I” she said, trying to urge it away
into the lake.

Either it couldn’t or wouldn’t. Anyhow it didn’t.

But it was out of reach of those urchins. Kate struggled
back from those stones, to her tree, to her shade, to her
book, away from the rage of the sun. Silent with slow
anger, she kept glancing up at the floating bird, and side¬
ways at the reed huts of the Indians in the black shadow.

Yes, the bird was dipping its beak in the water, and
shaking its head. It was coming to itself. But it did
not paddle. It let itself be lifted, lifted on the ripples, and
the ripples would drift it ashore.

“ Fool of a thing !” said Kate nervously, using all her
consciousness to make it paddle away into the lake.

Two companions, two black dots with white specks of
faces, were coming out of the pale glare of the lake. Two
mud-chicks swam busily forward. The first swam up and
poked its beak at the inert bird, as if to say Hello! What's
up ? Then immediately it turned away and paddled in
complete oblivion to the shore, its companion following.

Kate watched the rag of feathered misery anxiously.
Would it not rouse itself, wouldn’t it follow ?

No 1 There it lay, slowly, inertly drifting on the ripples,
only sometimes shaking its head.

The other two alert birds waded confidently, busily
among the stones.

HOME TO SAYULA

283

Kate read a bit more.

When she looked again, she could not see her bird. But
the other two were walking among the stones, jauntily.

She read a bit more.

The next thing was a rather loutish youth of eighteen or
so, in overall trousers, running with big strides towards the
water, and the stiff little man-brat scuttling after with
determined bare feet. Her heart stood still.

The two busy mud-chicks rose in flight and went low over
the water into the blare of light. Gone !

But the lout in the big hat and overall trousers and those
stiff Indian shoulders she sometimes hated so much, was
peering among the stones. She, however, was sure her bird
had gone.

No ! Actually no ! The stiff-shoulder lout stooped and
picked up the damp thing. It had let itself drift back.

He turned, dangling it like a rag from the end of one
wing, and handed it to the man-brat. Then he stalked
self-satisfied up the shore.

Ugh ! and that moment how Kate hated these people :
their terrible lowness, a terre , a terre. Their stiff broad
American shoulders, and high chests, and above all, their
walk, their prancing, insentient walk. As if some motor-
engine drove them at the bottom of their back.

Stooping rather forward and looking at the ground so that
he could turn his eyes sideways to her, without showing her
his face, the lout returned to the shadow of the huts. And
after him, diminutive, the dot of a man marched stiffly,
hurriedly, dangling the wretched bird, that stirred very
feebly, downwards from the tip of one wing. And from
time to time turning his round, black-eyed face in Kate’s
direction, vindictively, apprehensively, lest she should
swoop down on him again. Black, apprehensive male
defiance of the great, white, weird female.

Kate glared back from under her tree.

"I* looks would kill you, brat, I’d kill you,” she said.
And the urchin turned his face like clockwork at her from
time to time, as he strutted palpitating towards the gap in
the cane hedge, into which tbe youth had disappeared.

Kate debated whether to rescue the foolish bird again.
But what was the good !

This country would have its victim.

H*

America would

* 284

THE PLUMED SERPENT

have its victim. As long as time lasts, it will be the
continent divided between Victims and Victimiscrs. What
is the good of trying to interfere !

She rose up in detestation of the flabby bird, and of the
sulky-faced brat turning his full moon on her in appre¬
hension.

Lumps of women were by the water’s edge. Westwards,
down the glare, rose the broken-looking villas and the white
twin towers of the church, holding up its two fingers in
mockery above the scarlet flame-trees and the dark mangoes.
She saw the rather lousy shore, and smelt the smell of
Mexico, come out in the hot sun after the rains : excrement,
human and animal dried in the sun on a dry, dry earth; and
dry leaves; and mango leaves; and pure air with a little
refuse-smoke in it.

“ But the day will come when I shall go away,” she said
to herself.

And sitting rocking once more on her verandah, hearing
the clap-clap of tortillas from the far end of the patio, the
odd, metallic noises of birds, and feeling the clouds already
assembling in the west, with a weight of unborn thunder
upon them, she felt she could bear it no more : the vacuity,
and the pressure : the horrible uncreate elementality, so
uncouth, even sun and rain uncouth, uncouth.

And she wondered over the black vision in the eyes of that
urchin. The curious void.

He could not see that the bird was a real living creature
with a life of its own. This, his race had never seen.
With black eyes they stared out on an elemental world,
where the elements were monstrous and cruel, as the sun
was monstrous, and the cold, crushing black water of the
rain was monstrous, and the dry, dry, cruel earth.

And among the monstrosity of the elements flickered and
towered other presences : terrible uncouth things called
gringos, white people, and dressed up monsters of rich
people, with powers like gods, but uncouth, demonish gods.
And uncouth things like birds that could fly and snakes
that could crawl and fish that could swim and bite. An
uncouth, monstrous universe of monsters big and little, in
which man held his own by sheer resistance and guarded¬
ness, never, never going forth from his own darkness.

And sometimes, it was good to have revenge on the

HOME TO SAYULA

235

monsters that fluttered and strode. The monsters big
and the monsters little. Even the monster of that bird,
which had its own monstrous bird-nature. On this the
mite could wreck the long human vengeance, and for once
be master.

Blind to the creature as a soft, struggling thing finding its
own fluttering way through life. Seeing only another
monster of the outer void.

Walking forever through a menace of monsters, blind to
the sympathy in things, holding one’s own, and not giving
in, nor going forth. Hence the lifted chests and the pranc¬
ing walk. Hence the stiff, insentient spines, the rich
physique, and the heavy, dreary natures, heavy like the
dark-grey mud-bricks, with a terrible obstinate ponderosity
and a dry sort of gloom.

CHAP : XV. THE WRITTEN HYMNS OF QUETZAL-

COATL.

Tm: electric light in Sayula was as inconstant as every¬
thing else. It would come on at half-past six in the
evening, and it might bravely burn till ten at night, when
the village went dark with a click. But usually it did
no such thing. Often it refused to sputter into being till
seven, or half-past, or even eight o’clock. But its worst
trick was that of popping out just in the middle of supper,
or just when you were writing a letter. All of a sudden,
the black Mexican night came down on you with a thud.
And then everybody running blindly for matches and
candles, with a calling of frightened voices. Why were
they always frightened ? Then the electric light, like a
wounded thing, would try to revive, and a red glow would
burn in the bulbs, sinister. All held their breath—was it
coming or not? Sometimes it expired for good, sometimes
it got its breath back and shone, rather dully, but better
than nothing.

Once the rainy season had set in, it was hopeless. Night
after night it collapsed. And Kate would sit with her
weary, fluttering candle, while blue lightning revealed the
dark shapes of things in the patio. And half-seen people
went swiftly down to Juana’s end of the patio, secretly.

On such a night Kate sat on her verandah facing the
deepness of the black night. A candle shone in her desert
salon. Now and again she saw the oleanders and the
papaya in the patio garden, by the blue gleam of lightning
that fell with a noiseless splash into the pitch darkness.
There was a distant noise of thunders, several storms prowl¬
ing round like hungry jaguars, above the lake.

And several times the gate clicked, and crunching steps
came along the gravel, someone passed on the gravel walk,
saluting her, going down to Juana’s quarters, where the
dull light of a floating oil wick shone through the grated
window-hole Then there was a low, monotonous sound
of a voice, reciting or reading. And as the wind blew
and the lightning alighted again like a blue bird among

WRITTEN HYMNS OF QUETZALCOATL 237

the plants, there would come the sharp noise of the round

cuentas falling from the cuenta tree.

Kate was uneasy and a bit forlorn. She felt something
was happening down in the servants’ corner, something
secret in the dark. And she was stranded in her isolation
on her terrace.

But after all, it was her house, and she had a right to
know what her own people were up to. She rose from
her rocking chair and walked down the verandah and round
the dining-room bay. The dining-room, which had its
own two doors on the patio, was already locked up.

In the far corner beyond the well, she saw a group sit¬
ting on the ground, outside the doorway of Juana’s kitchen-
hole. Out of this little kitchen-shed shone the light of the
floating-wick lamp, and a voice was slowly intoning, all
the faces were looking into the dim light, the women dark-
hooded in rebozos, the men with their hats on, their
sarapes over their shoulders.

When they heard Kate’s footsteps, the faces looked her
way, and a voice murmured in warning. Juana struggled
to her feet.

“ It is the Nina!” she said. “ Come, then, Ni&a, you
poor innocent all alone in the evening.”

The men in the group rose to their feet—she recognized
the young Ezequiel, taking his hat off to her. And there
was Maria del Carmen, the bride. And inside the little
shed, with the wick-lamp on the floor, was Julio, the bride¬
groom of a few weeks ago. Concha and little Maria were
there, and a couple of strangers.

“ I could hear the voice—” said Kate. “ I didn’t know
it was you, Julio. How do you do?—And I wondered so
much what it was.”

There was a moment’s dead silence. Then Juana
plunged in.

“ Yes, Nina ! Come 1 It’s very nice that you coma.
Concha, the chair for the Nina !”

up rather unwillingly, and fetched the little
low chair which formed Juana’s sole article of furniture,
save the one bed.

“ I d0n,t disturb y°u said Kate.

No, Nina, you are a friend of Don Ram6n, uerdod?”

“ Yes,” said Kate.

238

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ And we—we are reading the Hymns.”

“ Yes?” said Kate.

“ The Hymns of Quetzalcoatl,” said Ezequiel, in his bark¬
ing young voice, with sudden bravado.

“ Do go on ! May I listen I”

“ You hear ! The Nina wants to listen. Read, Julio,
read ! Read then.”

They all sat down once more on the ground, and Julio
sat down by the lamp, but he hung his head, hiding his face
in the shadow of his big hat.

“ Entonces !—Read then,” said Juana.

“ He is afraid,” murmured Maria del Carmen, laying
her hand on the young man’s knee. “ However, read,
Julio ! Because the Nina wants to hear.”

And after a moment’s struggle, Julio said in a muffled
voice :

“ Do I begin from the beginning.”

** Yes, from the beginning 1 Read 1” said Juana.

The young man took a sheet of paper, like an advertise¬
ment leaflet, from under his blanket. At the top it had
the Quetzalcoatl symbol, called the Eye, the ring with the
bird-shape standing in the middle.

He began to read in a rather muffled voice :

“ I am Quetzalcoatl with the dark face, who lived in
Mexico in other days.

“ Till there came a stranger from over the seas, and his
face was white, and he spoke with strange words. He
showed his hands and his feet, that in both there were holes.
And he said : ‘ My name is Jesus, and they called me Christ.
Men crucified me on a Cross till I died. But I rose up out
of the place where they put me, and I went up to heaven
to my Father. Now my Father has told me to come to
Mexico.’

“ Quetzalcoatl said: You alone?

“ Jesus said: My mother is here. She shed many tears
for me, seeing me crucify. So she will hold the Sons of
Mexico on her lap, and soothe them when they suffer, and
when the women of Mexico weep, she will take them on her
bosom and comfort them. And when she cries to the
Father for her people, He will make everything well.

“ Quetzalcoatl said: That is well. And Brother with the
name Jesus, what will you do in Mexico?

WRITTEN HYMNS OF QUETZALCOATL 289

“ Jesus said: I will bring peace into Mexico. And on
the naked I will put clothes, and food between the lips of
the hungry, and gifts in all men’s hands, and peace and

love in their hearts. T ,.

“ Quetzalcoatl said: It is very good. I am old. 1 could

not do so much. I must go now. Farewell, people of Mexico.
Farewell, strange brother called Jesus. Farewell, woman
called Mary. It is time for me to go.

“ So Quetzalcoatl looked at his people; and he embraced
Jesus, the Son of Heaven; and he embraced Maria, the
Blessed Virgin, the Holy Mother of Jesus, and he turned
away. Slowly he went. But in his ears was the sound
of the tearing down of his temples in Mexico. Neverthe¬
less he wenton slowly, beingold, and weary with much living.
He climbed the steep of the mountain, and oyer the white
snow of the volcano. As he went, behind him rose a cry
of people dying, and a flame of places burning. He said to
himself : Surely those are Mexicans crying ! Yet I must not
hear, for Jesus has come to the land, and he will wipe the
tears from all eyes, and his Mother will make .them all glad.

“ He also said : Surely that is Mexico burning. But
I must not look, for all men will be brothers, now Jesus
has come to the land, and the women will sit by the blue
skirts of Mary, smiling with peace and with love.

“ So the old god reached the top of the mountain, and
looked up into the blue house of heaven. And through a
door in the blue wall he saw a great darkness, and stars and
a moon shining. And beyond the darkness he saw one great
star, like a bright gateway.

“ Then fire rose from the volcano around the old Quetzal¬
coatl, in wings and glittering feathers. And with the
wings of fire and the glitter of sparks Quetzalcoatl flew up,
up, like a wafting fire, like a glittering bird, up, into the
space, and away to the white steps of heaven, that lead to
the blue walls, where is the door to the dark. So he
entered in and was gone.

“ Night fell, and Quetzalcoatl was gone, and men in the
world saw only a star travelling back into heaven, depart¬
ing under the low branches of darkness.

“ Then men in Mexico said : Quetzalcoatl has gone. Even
his star has departed. We must listen to this Jesus, who
speaks in a foreign tongue.

240

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ So they learned a new speech from the priests that came
from upon the great waters to the east. And they became
Christians. ”

Julio, who had become absorbed, ended abruptly, as the
tale of the leaflet was ended.

“ It is beautiful,” said Kate.

“ And it is true 1” cried the sceptical Juana.

“ It seems to me true,” said Kate.

“ Senora 1” yelled Concha. “ Is it true that heaven is
up there, and you come down steps like clouds to the
edge of the sky, like the steps from the mole into the lake?
Is it true that El Senor comes and stands on the steps and
looks down at us like we look down into the lake to see the
charales ?”

Concha shoved up her fierce swarthy face, and shook her
masses of hair, glaring at Kate, waiting for an answer.

“ I don’t know everything,” laughed Kate. “ But it
seems to me true.”

“ She believes it,” said Concha, turning her face to her
mother.

“ And is it true,” asked Juana, “ that El Senor, El
Cristo del Mundo, is a gringo, and that He comes from your
country, with His Holy Mother?”

“ Not from my country, but from a country near.”

“ Listen 1” exclaimed Juana, awestruck. “ El Senor is
a gringito, and His Holy Mother is a gringita. Yes, one
really knows. Look ! Look at the feet of the Nina ! Pure
feet of tne Santisima ! Look 1” Kate was barefoot,
wearing sandals with a simple strap across the foot. Juana
touched one of the Nina’s white feet, fascinated. “ Feet
of the Santisima. And She, the Holy Mary is a gringita.
She came over the sea, like you, Nina?”

“ Yes, she came over the sea 1”

“ Ah 1 You know it?”

“ Yes. We know that.”

“Think of it! The Santisima is a gringita, and She
came over the Sea like the Nina, from the countries of the
Nina 1” Juana spoke in a wicked wonder, horrified,
delighted, mocking.

“ And the Lord is a Gringito—pure Gringito ?” barked
Concha.

“ And Nina—It was the gringos who killed El Senor?

WRITTEN HYMNS OF QUETZALCOATL 241

It wasn’t the Mexicans ? It was those other gringos who
put Him on the Cross ?”

“ Yes !” said Kate. “ It wasn’t the Mexicans.

“ The gringos ?”

“ Yes, the gringos.”

“ And He Himself was a Gringo?”

“ Yes 1” said Kate, not knowing what else to say.

“ Look !” said Juana, in her hushed, awed, malevolent
voice. “ He was a Gringo, and the gringos put him on the
Cross.”

“ But a long time ago,” said Kate hastily.

“ A long time ago, says the Nina,” echoed Juana, in

her awed voice.

There was a moment of silence. The dark faces of the
girls and men seated on the ground were turned up to Kate,
watching her fixedly, in the half light, counting every word.
In the outer air, thunder muttered in different places.

“ And now, Nina,” came the cool, clear voice of Maria
del Carmen, “ El Seiior is going back again to His Father,
and our Quetzalcoatl is coming back to us?”

<( And the Santisima is leaving us?” put in the hurried
voice of Juana. “ Think of it 1 The Santisima is leaving
us, and this Quetzalcoatl is coming ! He has no mother,
he !”

“ Perhaps he has a wife,” said Kate.

“ Quien sabe 1” murmured Juana.

“ They say,” said the bold Concha, “ that in Paradise
he has grown young.”

“ Who?” asked Juana.

“ I don’t know how they call him,” mutterd Concha,
ashamed to say the word.

“ Quetzalcoatl 1” said Ezequiel, in his barking strong
young voice. “ Yes, he is young. He is a god in the
flower of life, and finely built.”

“ They say so ! They say so 1” murmured Juana.
“ Think of it!”

** Here it says so !” cried Ezequiel. “ Here it is written.
In the second Hymn.”

“ Read it then, Julio.”

And Julio, now nothing loth, took out a second paper.

** I, Quetzalcoatl, of Mexico, I travelled the longest
journey.

242

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Beyond the blue outer wall of heaven, beyond the bright
place of the Sun, across the plains of darkness where the
stars spread out like trees, like trees and bushes, far away
to the heart of all the worlds, low down like the Morning
Star.

“ And at the heart of all the worlds those were waiting
whose faces I could not see. And in voices like bees they
murmured among themselves : This is Quetzalcoatl whose
hair is white with fanning the fires of life . He comes
alone , and slowly.

“ Then with hands I could not see, they took my hands,
and in their arms that I could not see, at last I died.

“ But when I was dead, and bone, they cast not my bones
away, they did not give me up to the four winds, nor to the
six. No, not even to the wind that blows down to the
middle of earth, nor to him that blows upward like a finger

pointing, did they give me.

“ He is dead, they said, but unrelinquished.

“ So they took the oil of the darkness, and laid it on my
brow and my eyes, they put it in my ears and nostrils and
my mouth, they put it on the two-fold silence of my breasts,
and on my sunken navel, and on my secret places, before
and behind : and in the palms of my hands, and on the
mounds of my knees, and under the tread of my feet.

“ Lastly, they anointed all my head with the oil that

comes out of the darkness. Then they said : He is sealed

up. Lay him away.

“ So they laid me in the fountain that bubbles darkly at
the heart of the worlds, far, far behind the sun, and there
lay I, Quetzalcoatl, in warm oblivion.

“ I slept the great sleep, and dreamed not.

“ Till a voice was calling : Quetzalcoatl!

“ I said : Who is that?

“ No one answered, but the voice said : Quetzalcoatl!

“ I said : Where art thou ?

“ So ! he said. I am neither here nor there. I am thy¬
self. Get up. , . ,

“ Now all was very heavy upon me, like a tomb-stone oi

darkness. ..... a

“ I said : Am I not old ? How shall I roll this stone away ?

“ How art thou old, when I am new man? I will roll
away the stone. Sit up 1

WRITTEN HYMNS OF QUETZALCOATL 243

“ 1 sat up, and the stone went roiling, crashing down the
gulfs of space.

“ I said to myself : I am new man. I am younger than
the young and older than the old. Lo 1 I am unfolded od
the stem of time like a flower, I am at the midst of the
flower of my manhood. Neither do I ache with desire,
to tear, to burst the bud; neither do I yearn away like a
seed that floats into heaven. The cup of my flowering is
unfolded, in its middle the stars float balanced with array.
My stem is in the air, my roots are in all the dark, the sun
is no more than a cupful within me.

“ Lo ! I am neither young nor old, I am the flower un¬
folded, I am new.

“ So I rose and stretched my limbs and looked around.
The sun was below me in a daze of heat, like a hot hum¬
ming-bird hovering at mid-day over the worlds. And
his beak was long and very sharp, he was like a dragon.

“ And a faint star was hesitating wearily, waiting to
pass.

“ I called aloud, saying : * Who is that? *

My name is Jesus , I am Mary’s son .

I am coming home.

My mother the Moon is dark .

Brother , Quetzalcoatl f

Hold back the wild hot sun.

Bind him with shadow while I pass.

Let me come home.

“ I caught the sun and held him, and in my shade the
faint star slipped past, going slowly into the dark reaches
beyond the burning of the sun. Then on the slope of silence
he sat down and took off his sandals, and I put them on.

“ ‘ How do they wear the wings of love, Jesus, the
Mexican people? *

“ * The souls of the Mexican people are heavy for the
wings of love, they have swallowed the stone of despair.*

“ ‘ Where is your Lady Mother in the mantle of blue, she
with comfort in her lap? *

Her mantle faded in the dust of the world, she was
weary without sleep, for the voices of people cried night

214

THE PLUMED SERPENT

and day, and the knives of the Mexican people were sharper
than the pinions of love, and their stubbornness was stronger
than hope. Lo 1 the fountain of tears dries up in the eyes
of the old, and the lap of the aged is comfortless, they look
for rest. Quetzalcoatl, Sir, my mother went even before
me, to her still white bed in the moon.*

“ * She is gone, and thou are gone, Jesus, the Crucified.
Then what of Mexico ? *

“ ‘ The images stand in their churches, Oh Quetzalcoatl,
they don’t know that I and my Mother have departed. They
are angry souls, Brother, my Lord ! They vent their
anger. They broke my Churches, they stole my strength
they withered the lips of the Virgin. They drove us away,
and we crept away like a tottering old man and a woman,
tearless and bent double with age. So we fled while they
were not looking. And we seek but rest, to forget forever
the children of men who have swallowed the stone of
despairs.’

“ Then said I : It is good, pass on. I, Quetzalcoatl, will
go down. Sleep thou the sleep without dreams. Farewell
at the cross-roads, Brother Jesus.

“ He said : Oh, Quetzalcoatl ! They have forgotten thee.
The feathered snake ! The serpent—silent bird ! They are
asking for none of thee.

“ I S aid : Go thy way, for the dust of earth is in thy eyes
and on thy lips. For me the serpent of middle-earth sleeps
in my loins and my belly, the bird of the outer air perches
on my brow and sweeps her bill across my breast. But I,
I am lord of two ways. I am master of up and down. I am
as a man who is a new man, with new limbs and life, and the
light of the Morning Star in his eyes. Lo ! I am I ! The
lord of both ways. Thou wert lord of the one way. Now
it leads thee to the sleep. Farewell !

“ So Jesus went on towards the sleep. And Mary the
Mother of Sorrows lay down on the bed of the white moon,

weary beyond any more tears.

** And I, I am on the threshold. I am stepping across the
border. I am Quetzalcoatl, lord of both ways, star between
day and the dark.”

There was silence as the young man finished reading.

CHAP : XVI. CIPRIANO AND KATE.

On Saturday afternoons the big black canoes with their
large square sails came slowly approaching out of the thin
haze across the lake, from the west, from Tlapaltepec, with
big straw bats and with blankets and earthenware stuff,
from Ixtlahuacan and Jaramay and Las Zemas with mats
and timber and charcoal and oranges, from Tuliapan and
Cuxcueco and San Cristobal with boatloads of dark green,
globular water-melons, and piles of red tomatoes, mangoes,
vegetables, oranges : and boat-loads of bricks and tiles, burnt
red, but rather friable; then more charcoal, more wood,
from the stark dry mountains over the lake.

Kate nearly always went out about five o’clock, on
Saturdays, to see the boats, flat-bottomed, drift up to the
shallow shores, and begin to unload in the glow of the even¬
ing. It pleased her to see the men running along the planks
with the dark-green melons, and piling them in a mound
on the rough sand, melons dark-green like creatures with pale
bellies. To see the tomatoes all poured out into a shallow
place in the lake, bobbing about while the women washed
them, a bobbing scarlet upon the water.

The long, heavy bricks were piled in heaps along xhe scrap
of demolished break-water, and little gangs of asses came
trotting down the rough beach, to be laden, pressing their
little feet in the gravelly sand, and flopping their ears.

The cargadores were busy at the charcoal boats, carrying
out the rough sacks.

“ Do you want charcoal, Nina? ” shouted a grimy carga-
dor, who had carried the trunks from the station on his
back.

“ At how much ? ”

f< Twenty-five reales the two sacks.”

“ I pay twenty reales.”

“ At twenty reales then, Senorita. But you give me two
reales for the transport ? ”

“ The owner pays the transport,” said Kate. “ But I
will give you twenty centavos.”

Away went the man, trotting barelegged, barefoot, over
the stony ground, with two large sacks of charcoal on his

245

246

THE PLUMED SERPENT

shoulders. The men carry huge weights, without seeming
ever to think they are heavy. Almost as if they liked to
feel a huge weight crushing on their iron spines, and to be
able to resist it.

Baskets of spring guavas, baskets of sweet lemons called
limas, baskets of tiny green and yellow lemons, big as
walnuts ; orange-red and greenish mangoes, oranges, carrots,
cactus fruits in great abundance, a few knobby potatoes,
flat, pearl-white onions, little calabasitas and speckled green
calabasitas like frogs, camotes cooked and raw—she loved
to watch the baskets trotting up the beach past the church.

Then, rather late as a rule, big red pots, bulging red ollas
for water-jars, earthenware casseroles and earthenware jugs
with cream and black scratched pattern in glaze, bowls, big
flat earthenware discs for cooking tortillas—much earthen-

ware. . , ,

On the west shore, men were running up the beach wear¬
ing twelve enormous hats at once, like a trotting pagoda.
Men trotting with finely woven huaraches and rough strip
sandals. And men with a few dark serapes, with gaudy
rose-pink patterns, in a pile on their shoulders.

It was fascinating. But at the same time, there was a
heavy, almost sullen feeling on the air. These people
came to market to a sort of battle. They came, not for
the joy of selling, but for the sullen contest with those who
wanted what they had got. The strange, black resent¬
ment always present.

By the time the church bells clanged for sunset, the
market had already begun. On all the pavements round
the plaza squatted the Indians with their wares, pyramids
of green water-melons, arrays of rough earthenware, hats
in piles, pairs of sandals side by side, a great array of fruit,
a spread of collar-studs and knick-knacks, called novedades,
little trays with sweets. And people arriving all the time
out of the wild country, with laden asses.

Yet never a shout, hardly a voice to be heard. None
of the animation and the frank wild clamour of a Mediter¬
ranean market. Always the heavy friction of the will;
always, always, grinding upon the spirit, like the grey-black

grind of lava-rock. ...... . i

When dark fell, the vendors lighted their tm torch-lamps,

and the flames wavered and streamed as the dark-faced men

CIPRIANO AND KATE

247

squatted on the ground in their white clothes and big hats,
waiting to sell. They never asked you to buy. They
never showed their wares. They didn’t even look at you.
It was as if their static resentment and indifference would
hardly let them sell at all.

Kate sometimes felt the market cheerful and easy. But
more often she felt an unutterable weight slowly, invisibly
sinking on her spirits. And she wanted to run. She
wanted above all, the comfort of Don Ram6n and the Hymns
of Quetzalcoatl. This seemed to her the only escape from
a world gone ghastly.

There was talk of revolution again, so the market was
uneasy and grinding the black grit into the spirit. Foreign-
looking soldiers were about, with looped-hats, and knives
and pistols, and savage northern faces : tall, rather thin
figures. They would loiter about in pairs, talking in a
strange northern speech, and seeming more alien even than
Kate herself.

The food-stalls were brilliantly lighted. Rows of men
sat at the plank boards, drinking soup and eating hot food
with their fingers. The milkman rode in on horseback,
his two big cans of milk slung before him, and he made
his way slowly through the people to the food-stalls. There,
still sitting unmoved on horseback, he delivered bowls of
milk from the can in front of him, and then, on horseback
like a monument, took his supper, his bowl of soup, and
his plate of tamales, or of minced, fiery meat spread on
tortillas. The peons drifted slowly round. Guitars were
sounding, half-secretly. A motor-car worked its way in
from the city, choked with people, girls, young men, city
papas, children, in a pile.

The rich press of life, above the flare of torches upon the
ground ! The throng of white-clad, big-hatted men circu¬
lating slowly, the women with dark rebozos slipping silently.
Dark trees overhead. The doorway of the hotel bright
with electricity. Girls in organdie frocks, white, cherry-red,
blue, from the city. Groups of singers singing inwardly.
And all the noise subdued, suppressed.

The sense of strange, heavy suppression, the dead black
power of negation in the souls of the peons. It was almost
pitiful to see the pretty, pretty slim girls from Guadalajara
going round and round, their naked arms linked together.

248

THE PLUMED SERPENT

so light in their gauzy, scarlet, -white, blue, orange dresses,
looking for someone to look at them, to take note of them.
And the peon men only emitting from their souls the black
vapor of negation, that perhaps was hate. They seemed,
the natives, to have the power of blighting the air with
their black, rock-bottom resistance.

Kate almost wept over the slim, eager girls, pretty as rather
papery flowers, eager for attention, but thrust away,
victimised.

Suddenly there was a shot. The market-place was on its
feet in a moment, scattering, pouring away into the streets
and the shops. Another shot ! Kate, from where she stood,
saw across the rapidly-emptying plaza a man sitting back
on one of the benches, firing a pistol into the air. He was
a lout from the city, and he was half drunk. The people
knew what it was. Yet any moment he might lower the
pistol and start firing at random. Everybody hurried
silently, melting away, leaving the plaza void.

Two more shots, pap-pap 1 still into the air. And at the
same moment a little officer in uniform darted out of the
dark street where the military station was, and where now
the big hats were piled on the ground; he rushed straight to
the drunkard, who was spreading his legs and waving the
pistol : and before you could breathe, slap ! and again slap !
He had slapped the pistol-firer first on one side of the face,
then on the other, with slaps that resounded almost like
shots. And in the same breatn he seized the arm that held

the pistol and wrested the weapon away.

Two of the strange soldiers instantly rushed up and
seized the man by the arms. The officer spoke two words,
they saluted and marched off their prisoner.

Instantly the crowd was ebbing back into the plaza, un¬
concerned. Kate sat on a bench with her heart beating.
She saw the prisoner pass under a lamp, streaks of blood
on his cheek. And Juana, who had fled, now came scuttling
back and took Kate’s hand, saying :

“ Look ! Nina 1 It is the General 1

She rose startled to her feet. The officer was saluting

her. ,

“ Don Cipriano !” she said.

** The same !” he replied.

frighten you?”

“ Did that drunken fellow

CIPRIANO AND KATE

249

“ Not much ! Only startled me. 1 didn’t feel any
evil intention behind it.”

“ No, only drunk.”

“ But I shall go home now.”

“ Shall I walk with you?”

“ Would you care to?”

He took his place at her side, and they turned down by
the church, to the lake shore. There was a moon above
the mountain and the air was coming fresh, not too strong,
from the west. From the Pacific. Little lights were
burning ruddy by the boats at the water’s edge, some out¬
side, and some inside, under the roof-tilt of the boat’s
little inward shed. Women were preparing a mouthful
of food.

“ But the night is beautiful,” said Kate, breathing deep.

“ With the moon clipped away just a little,” he said.

Juana was following close on her heels : and behind, two
soldiers in slouched hats.

“ Do the soldiers escort you?” she said.

“ I suppose so,” said he.

“ But the moon,” she said, “ isn’t lovely and friendly
as it is in England or Italy.”

“ It is the same planet,” he replied.

“ But the moonshine in America isn’t the same. It
doesn’t make one feel glad as it does in Europe. One
feels it would like to hurt one.”

He was silent for some moments. Then he said :

“ Perhaps there is in you something European, which
hurts our Mexican Moon.”

“ But I come in good faith.”

“ European good faith. Perhaps it is not the same as
Mexican.”

Kate was silent, almost stunned.

“Fancy your Mexican moon objecting to me 1” she
laughed ironically.

“ Fancy your objecting to our Mexican moon! ” said he.

“ I wasn’t,” said she.

They came to the comer of Kate’s road. At the comer
was a group of trees, and under the trees, behind the
hedge, several reed huts. Kate often laughed at the donkey
looking over the dry-stone low wall, and at the black sheep
with curved horns, tied to a bitten tree, and at the lad,

250

THE PLUMED SERPENT

naked but for a bit of a shirt, fleeing into the corner under
the thorn screen.

Kate and Cipriano sat on the verandah of the House of
the Cuentas. She offered him vermouth, but he re¬
fused.

They were still. There came the faint pip !-pip ! from
the little electric plant just up the road, which Jesus
tended. Then a cock from beyond the bananas crowed
powerfully and hoarsely.

“ But how absurd !” said Kate. “Cocks don’t crow at
this hour.”

“ Only in Mexico,” laughed Cipriano.

“ Yes ! Only here !”

“ He thinks your moon is the sun, no?” he said, teasing

her. .

The cock crowed powerfully, again and again.

“ This is very nice, your house, your patio,” said

Cipriano.

But Kate was silent.

“ Or don’t you like it?” he said.

“ You see,” she answered, “ I have nothing to do ! The
servants won’t let me do anything. If I sweep my room,
they stand and say Que Nina ! Que Niria ! As if I was
standing on my head for their benefit. I sew, though I’ve
no interest in sewing.—What is it, for a life ? _

“ And you read ! ” he said, glancing at the magazines and

books.

“ Ah, it is

all such stupid, lifeless stuff, in the books and

papers,” she said.

There was a silence. After which he said :

“ But what would you like to do? As you say, you
take no interest in sewing. You know the Navajo women,
when they weave a blanket, leave a little place for their
soul to come out, at the end : not to weave their soul into
it.—I always think England has woven her soul into her
fabrics, into all the things she has made. And she never
left a place for it to come out. So now all her soul is in

her goods, and nowhere else.” „

“ But Mexico has no soul,” said Kate. »ne s

swallowed the stone of despair, as the hymn says. .

“ Ah l You think so? I think not. The soul is also
a thing you make, like a pattern in a blanket. It is very

CIPRIANO AND KATE

251

nice while all the wools are rolling their different threads
and different colours, and the pattern is being made. But
once it is finished—then finished it has no interest any
more. Mexico hasn’t started to weave the pattern of her
soul. Or she is only just starting : with Ramdn. Don’t
you believe in Ram6n?”

Kate hesitated before she answered.

“ Ram6n, yes ! I do ! But whether it’s any good trying
here in Mexico, as he is trying—” she said slowly.

“ He is in Mexico. He tries here. Why should not
you?”

“ I?”

“ Yes ! You ! Ramdn doesn’t believe in womanless
gods, he says. Why should you not be the woman in the
Quetzalcoatl pantheon? If you will, the goddess 1”

“I, a goddess in the Mexican pantheon?” cried Kate,
with a burst of startled laughter.

“ Why not?” said he.

“ But I am not Mexican,” said she.

“ You may easily be a goddess,” said he, “ in the same
pantheon with Don Ramon and me.”

A strange, inscrutable flame of desire seemed to be burn¬
ing on Cipriano’s face, as his eyes watched her glittering.
Kate could not help feeling that it was a sort of intense,
blind ambition , of which she was partly an object: a
passionate object also : which kindled the Indian to the
hottest pitch of his being.

“ But I don’t feel like a goddess in a Mexican pantheon,”
she said. “ Mexico is a bit horrible to me. Don Ram6n is
wonderful : but I’m so afraid they will destroy him.”

“ Come, and help to prevent it.”

“ How?”

“ You marry me. You complain you have nothing to
do. Then marry me. Marry me, and help Ramdn and me.
We need a woman, Ram6n says, to be with us. And you
are the woman. There is a great deal to do.”

“But can’t I help without marrying anybody?” said
Kate.

“ How can you?” he said simply.

And she knew it was true.

“ But you see,” she said, “ I have no impulse to marry
you, so how can I?”

252

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Why?” he said.

“You see, Mexico is really a bit horrible to me. And
the black eyes of the people really make my heart contract,
and my flesh shrink. There’s a bit of horror in it. And
I don’t want horror in my soul.”

He was silent and unfathomable. She did not know
in the least what he was thinking, only a black cloud
seemed over him.

“ Why not?” he said at last. “Horror is real. Why
not a bit of horror, as you say, among all the rest?”

He gazed at her with complete, glittering earnestness,
something heavy upon her.

“ But-” she stammered in amazement.

“ You feel a bit of horror for me too—But why not?
Perhaps I feel a bit of horror for you too, for your lights
coloured eyes and your strong white hands. But that is
good.”

Kate looked at him in amazement. And all she wanted
was to flee, to flee away beyond the bounds of this gruesome
continent.

“ Get used to it,” he said. “ Get used to it that there
must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life. And
marry me, and you will find many things that are not
horror. The bit of horror is like the sesame seed in the
nougat, it gives the sharp wild flavour. It is good to
have it there.”

He sat watching her with black, glittering eyes, and
talking with strange, uncanny reason. His desire
seemed curiously impersonal, physical, and yet not personal
at all. She felt as if, for him, she had some other name,
she moved within another species. As if her name were,
for example, Itzpapalotl, and she had been bom in un¬
known places, and was a woman unknown to herself.

Yet surely, surely he was only putting his will over

hC Shc was breathless with amazement, because he had
made her see the physical possibility of marrying him : a
thing she had never even glimpsed before. But surely,
surely it would not be herself who could marry him. It
would be some curious female within her, whom she did

not know and did not own.

He was emanating a dark, exultant sort of passion.

CIPRIANO AND KATE

253

« 1 ca n’t believe,” she said, “ that I could do it.”

« Do it,” he said. “ And then you will know.”

She shuddered slightly, and went indoors for a wrap.
She came out again in a silk Spanish shawl, brown, but
deeply embroidered in silver-coloured silk. She tangled
her fingers nervously in the long brown fringe.

Really, he seemed sinister to her, almost repellant. Yet
she hated to think that she merely was afraid : that she
had not the courage. She sat with her head bent, the
light falling on her soft hair a d on the heavy, silvery-
coloured embroidery of her shawl, which she wrapped
round her tight, as the Indian women do their rebozos.
And his black eyes watched her, and watched the rich
shawl, with a peculiar intense glitter. The shawl, too,
fascinated him.

“ Well!” he said suddenly. “ When shall it be?”

“ What?” she said, glancing up into his black eyes with
real fear.

“ The marriage.”

She looked at him, almost hypnotised with amazement
that he should have gone so far. And even now, she had
not the power to make him retreat.

“ I don’t know,” she said.

“ Will you say in August? On the first of August?”

“ I won’t say any time,” she said.

Suddenly the black gloom and anger of the Indians came
over it. Then again he shook it off, with a certain callous
indifference.

“ Will you come to Jamiltepec to-morrow to see
Ram6n?” he asked. “ He Wants to speak with you.”

Kate also wanted to see Ram6n : she always did.

“ Shall I?” she said.

‘ Yes 1 Come with me in the morning in the auto¬
mobile. Yes ?”

‘‘ I would like to see Don Ram6n again,” she said.

* You are not afraid of him, eh ? Not the bit of horror,
eh ?” he said, smiling peculiarly.

No. But Don Ram6n isn’t really Mexican,” she said.

Not really Mexican ?”

** I—He feels European.”

* ^ ea ^y 1 To me he is—Mexico.”

one paused and gathered herself together.

254

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ I will row in a boat to Jamiltepec tomorrow, or I will
take Alonso’s motor-boat. I will come about ten o’clock.”

“ Very good !” said Cipriano, rising to leave.

When he had gone, she heard the sound of the drum
from the plaza. It would be another meeting of the men
of Quetzalcoatl. But she had not the desire nor the
courage to set out afresh that day.

Instead, she went to bed, and lay breathing the inner
darkness. Through the window-cracks she saw the white¬
ness of the moon, and through the walls she heard the
small pulse of the drum. And it all oppressed her and
" made her afraid. She lay forming plans to escape. She
must escape. She would hurriedly pack her trunks and
disappear : perhaps take the train to Manzanillo, on the
coast, and thence sail up to California, to Los Angeles
or to San Francisco. Suddenly escape, and flee away to
a white man’s country, where she could once more breathe
freely. How good it would be '—Yes, this was what she
would do.

The night grew late, the drum ceased, she heard
Ezequiel come home and lie down on the mattress outside
her door. The only sound was the hoarse crowing of cocks
in the moonlit night. And in her room, like someone
striking a match, came the greenish light of a firefly, inter¬
mittent, now here, now there.

Thoroughly uneasy and cowed, she went to sleep. But
then she slept deeply.

And curiously enough, she awoke in the morning with
a new feeling of strength. It was six o’clock, the sun was
making yellow pencils through her shutter-cracks. She
threw open her window to the street, and looked through
the iron grating at the little lane with deep shadow under
the garden wall, and above the wall, banana leaves fray¬
ing translucent green, and shaggy mops of palm-trees
perching high, towards the twin white tower-tips of the
church, crowned by the Greek cross with four equal

arms. ... , .

In the lane it was already motion : big cows marching

slowly to the lake, under the bluish shadow of the wall, and
a small calf, big-eyed and adventurous, trotting aside to
gaze through her gate at the green watered grass and the
flowers. The silent peon, following, lifted his two arms with

CIPRIANO AND KATE

255

a sudden swoop upwards, noiselessly, and the calf careered
on. Only the sound of the feet of calves.

Then two boys vainly trying to u^ge a young bull-calf to
the lake. It kept on jerking up its sharp rump, and giving
dry little kicks, from which the boys ran away. They
pushed its shoulder, and it butted them with its blunt young
head. They were in the state of semi-frenzied bewilderment
which the Indians fall into when they are opposed and
frustrated. And they took the usual recourse of running to
a little distance, picking up heavy stones, anil hurling them
viciously at the animal.

“ No!” cried Kate from her window. “ Don’t throw
stones. Drive it sensibly !”

They started as if the skies had opened, dropped their
stones, and crept very much diminished after the see¬
sawing bull-calf.

An ancient crone appeared at the window with a plate
of chopped-up young cactus leaves, for three centavos.
Kate didn’t like cactus vegetable, but she bought it. An
old man was thrusting a young cockerel through the
window-bars.

“ Go,” said Kate, “ into the patio.”

And she shut her window on the street, for the invasion
had begun.

But it had only changed doors.

“ Nina! Nina ! ” came Juana’s voice. “ Says the old
man that you buy this chicken ?”

“ At how much?” shouted Kate, slipping on a dressing
gown.

“ At ten reales.”

“ Oh, No!” said Kate, flinging open her patio doors,
and appearing in her fresh wrap of pale pink cotton crepe,
embroidered with heavy white flowers. “ Not more than
a peso!”

“ A peso and ten centavos 1” pleaded the old man,
balancing the staring-eyed red cock between his hands.
<l He is nice and fct, Senorita. See!”

And he held out the cock for Kate to take it and balance
it between her hands, to try its weight. She motioned
to him to hand it to Juana. The red cock fluttered, and
suddenly crowed in the transfer. Juana balanced him,
®nd made a grimace.

256

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ No, only a peso !” said Kate.

The man gave a sudden gesture of assent, received the
peso, and disappeared like a shadow. Concha lurched
up and took the cock, and instantly she bawled in derision :

“ Esta muy flaco ! He is very thin.”

“ Put him in the pen,” said Kate. “ We’ll let him
grow.”

The patio was liquid with sunshine and shadows.
Ezequiel had rolled up his mattress and gone. Great
rose-coloured hibiscus dangled from the tips of their boughs,
there was a faint scent from the half-wild, creamy roses.
The great mango trees were most sumptuous in the
morning, like cliffs, with their hard green fruits dropping
like the organs of some animal from the new bronze leaves,
so curiosly heavy with life.

“ Esta muy flaco !” the young Concha was bawling still
in derision as she bore off the young cock to the pen under
the banana trees. “ He’s very scraggy.”

Everybody watched intent while the red cock was put
in among the few scraggy fowls. The grey cock, elder,
retreated to the far end of the pen, and eyed the new¬
comer with an eye of thunder. The red cock, muy flaco ,
stood diminished in a dry comer. Then suddenly he
stretched himself and crowed shrilly, his red gills lifted
like an aggressive beard. And the grey cock stirred around,
preparing the thunders of his vengeance. The hens took
not the slightest notice.

Kate laughed, and went back to her room to dress, in
the powerful newness of the morning. Outside her window
the women were passing quietly, the red water-jar on one
shoulder, going to the lake for water. They always put
one arm over their head, and held the jar on the other
shoulder. It had a contorted look, different from the
proud way the women carried water in Sicily.

“ Nina 1 Nina !” Juana was crying outside.

“ Wait a minute,” said Kate.

It was another of the hymn-sheets, with a Hymn o!

Quetzalcoatl. . ,

“ See, Nina, the new hymn from last evening.

Kate took the leaflet and sat upon her bed to read it.

CIPRIANO AND KATE

257

Quetzalcoatl Looks Down on Mexico.

Jesus had gone far up the dark slope, when he looked
back.

Quetzalcoatl, my brother 1 he called. Send me my images,
And the images of my mother, and the images of my
saints.

Send me them by the swift way, the way of the sparks,
That I may hold them like memories in my arms when 1
go to sleep.

And Quetzalcoatl called back : I will do it.

Then he laughed, seeing the sun dart fiercely at him.

He put up his hand, and held back the sun with his shadow-

So he passed the yellow one, who lashed like a dragon in
vain.

And having passed the yellow one, he saw the earth
beneath.

And he saw Mexico lying like a dark woman with white
breast-tips.

Wondering he stepped nearer, and looked at her,

At her trains, at her railways and her automobiles.

At her cities of stone and her huts of straw.

And he said : Surely this looks very curious !

He sat within the hollow of a cloud, and saw the men that
worked in the fields, with foreign overseers.

He saw the men that were blind, reeling with aguardiente.
He saw the women that were not clean.

He saw the hearts of them all, that were black, and heavy,
with a stone of anger at the bottom.

Surely, he said, this is a curious people I have found !

So leaning forward on his cloud, he said to himself :

I will call to them.

Hold I Hold l Mexicanosl Glance away a moment towards
me.

your eyes this way , Mexicanos 1

not at all, they glanced not one his way.

258

THE PLUMED SERPENT

lloldld ! Mexicanos ! Iloldld I

They have gone stone deaf! he said.

So be blew down on them, to blow his breath in their
faces.

But in the weight of their stupefaction, none of them
knew.

Holaldl What a pretty people \

All gone stupefied l

A falling star was running like a white dog over a plain.

He whistled to it loudly, twice, till it fell to his hand.

In his hand it lay and went dark.

It was the Stone of Change.

This is the stone of change ! he said.

So he tossed it awhile in his hand, and played with it.
Then suddenly he spied the old lake, and he threw it m.
It fell in.

And two men looked up.

Halald! he said. Mexicanos l
Are there two of you awake?

So he laughed, and one heard him laughing.

Why are you laughing? asked the first man of Quetzalcoatl.

I hear the voice of my First Man ask me why I am laugh-
ing ?

lloldld , Mexicanos l It is funny 1
To see them so glum and so lumpish 1

Hey ! First Man of my name! Hark here I

Here is my sign.

Get a place ready for me.

Send Jesus his images back, Mary and the saints and all.
Wash yourself, and rub oil in your skin.

On the seventh day, let every man wash h.mself, and put

oil on his skin; let every woman. ,

Let him have no animal walk on his body, nor through the
shadow of his hair. Say the same to the women.
Tell them they all are fools, that I m laughmg at them.

CIPRIANO AND KATE

259

The first thing I did when I saw them, was to laugh at the
sight of such fools.

Such lumps, such frogs with stones in their bellies.

Tell them they are like frogs with stones in their bellies,
can’t hop I

Tell them they must get the stones out of their bellies.

Get rid of their heaviness,

Their lumpishness.

Or I’ll smother them all.

I’ll shake the earth, and swallow them up, with their
cities.

I’ll send fire and ashes upon them, and smother them all.

I’ll turn their blood like sour milk rotten with thunder,

They will bleed rotten blood, in pestilence.

Even their bones shall crumble.

Tell them so. First Man of my Name.

For the sun and the moon are alive, and watching with
gleaming eyes.

And the earth is alive, and ready to shake off his fleas.

And the stars are ready with stones to throw in the faces
of men.

And the air that blows good breath in the nostrils of people
and beasts

I* ready to blow bad breath upon them, to perish them
all.

The stars and the earth and the sun and the moon and the
winds

Are about to dance the war dance round you, men 1
When I say the word, they will start,
ror sun and stars and earth and the very rains are weary
Of tossing and rolling the substance of life to your lips.
n fy" e saying to one another : Let us make an end
I those ill-smelling tribes of men, these frogs that can’t

__ lump,

TJese cocks that can’t crow
these pigs than can’t grunt
f £ais flesh that smells
These words that are all flat
these money vermin.

\

260

THE PLUMED SERPENT

These white men, and red men, and yellow men, and
brown men, and black men

That are neither white, nor red, nor yellow, nor brown,
nor black

But everyone of them dirtyish.

Let us have a spring cleaning in the world.

For men upon the body of the earth are like lice,

Devouring the earth into sores.

This is what stars and sun and earth and moon and winds
and rain

Are discussing with one another; they are making ready
to start.

So tell the men I am coming to,

To make themselves clean, inside and out.

To roll the grave-stone off their souls, from the cave of
their bellies,

To prepare to be men.

Or else prepare for the other things.

Kate read this long leaflet again, and again, and a swift
darkness like a whirlwind seemed to envelop the morning.
She drank her coffee on the verandah, and the heavy
papayas in their grouping seemed to be oozing like great
drops from the invisible spouting of the fountain of non¬
human life. She seemed to see the great sprouting and
urging of the cosmos, moving into weird life. And men
onTy like green-fly clustering on the tender tips, an aber¬
ration there. So monstrous the rolling and unfolding of
the life of the cosmos, as if even iron could grow like
lichen deep in the earth, and cease growing, and prepare
to perish. Iron and stone render up their life, when the
hour comes. And men are less than the green-fly sucking
the stems of the bush, so long as they live by business
and bread alone. Parasites on the face of the earth.

She strayed to the shore. The lake was blue m the
morning light, the opposite mountains pale and dry and
ribbed like mountains in the desert. Only at their feet,
next the lake, the dark strip of trees and white specks of

V1 Near her against the light five cows stood with their
noses to the water drinking. Women were kneeling on
the stones, filling red jars. On forked sticks stuck up

261

CIPRIANO AND KATE

on the foreshore, frail fishing nets were hung out, drying,
and on the nets a small bird sat facing the sun; he was
red as a drop of new blood, from the arteries of the air *

From the straw huts under the trees, her urchin of the
mud-chick was scuttling towards her, clutching something
in his fist. He opened his hand to her, and on the palm
lay three of the tiny cooking-pots, the ollitas which the
natives had thrown into the water long ago, to the gods.

“ Muy chiquitas !” he said, in his brisk way, a htt e,
fighting tradesman; “ do you buy them ?”

“ I have no money. Tomorrow 1” said Kate.

“ Tomorrow 1” he said, like a pistol shot.

“ Tomorrow.”

He had forgiven her, but she had not forgiven him.
Somebody in the fresh Sunday morning was singing
rather beautifully, letting the sound, as it were, produce
itself.

A boy was prowling with a sling, prowling like a cat, to
get the little birds. The red bird like a drop of new blood
twittered upon the almost invisible fish-nets, then in a flash
was gone. The boy prowled under the delicate green of
the willow trees, stumbling over the great roots in the
sand.

Along the edge of the w**ter flew four dark birds, their
necks pushed out, skimming silent near the silent surface
of the lake, in a jagged level rush.

Kate knew these mornings by the lake. They hypno¬
tised her almost like death. Scarlet birds like drops of
blood, in very green willow trees. The aquador trotting
to her house with a pole over his shoulder, and two heavy
square gasoline cans, one at each end of the pole, filled
with hot water. He had been to the hot spring for her
daily supply. Now barefoot, with one bare leg, the young
man trotted softly beneath the load, his dark, handsome
face sunk beneath the shadows of the big hat, as he trotted
in a silence, mindlessness that was like death.

Dark heads out on the water in little groups, like black
water-fowl bobbing. Were they birds? Were they heads?
Was this human life, or something intermediate, that lifted
its orange, wet, glistening shoulders a little out of the lake,
beneath the dark head ?

She knew so well what the day would be. Slowly the

262

THE PLUMED SERPENT

sun thickening and intensifying in the air overhead. And
slowly the electricity clotting invisibly as afternoon
approached. The beach in the blind heat, strewn with
refuse, smelling of refuse and the urine of creatures.

Everything going vague in the immense sunshine, as the
air invisibly thickened, and Kate could feel the electricity
pressing like hot iron on the back of her head. It stupe¬
fied her like morphine. Meanwhile the clouds rose like
white trees from behind the mountains, as the afternoon
swooned in silence, rose and spread black branches, quickly,
in the sky, from which the lightning stabbed like birds.

And in the midst of the siesta stupor, the sudden round
bolts of thunder, and the crash and the chill of rain.

Tea-time, and evening coming. The last sailing-boats
making to depart, waiting for the wind. The wind was
from the west, the boats going east and south had gone,
their sails were lapsing far away on the lake. But the
boats towards the west were waiting, waiting, while the
water rattled under their black, flat keels.

The big boat from Tlapaltepec, bringing many people
from the west, waited on into the night. She was anchored
a few yards out, and in the early night her passengers
came down the dark beach, weary of the day, to go
on board. They clustered in a group at the edge of the

flapping water. . , ,

The big, wide, flat-bottomed canoe, with her wooden

awning and her one straight mast lay black, a few yards
out, in the dark night. A lamp was burning under the
wooden roof; one looked in, from the shore. And this was
home for the passengers.

A short man with trousers rolled up came to carry the
people on board. The men stood with their backs to him,
legs apart. He suddenly dived at them, ducked his head
between the fork of their legs, and rose, with a man on his
shoulders. So he waded out through the water to the black
boat, and heaved his living load on board.

For a woman, he crouched down before her, and she sat
on one of his shoulders. He clasped her legs with his right
arm, she clasped his dark head. So he earned her to the

ship, as if she were nothing. . .

Soon the boat was full of people. They sat on the mats
of the floor, with their backs to the sides of the vessel,

CIPRIANO AND KATE

263

baskets hanging from the pent roof, swaying as the vessel
swayed. Men spread their serapes and curled up to sleep.
The light of the lantern lit them up, as they sat and lay,
and slept, or talked in murmurs.

A little woman came up out of the darkness; then
suddenly ran back again. She had forgotten something.
But the vessel would not sail without her, for the wind
would not change yet.

The tall mast stood high, the great sail lay in folds
along the roof, ready. Under the roof, the lantern
swayed, the people slept and stretched. Probably they
would not sail till midnight. Then down the lake to
Tlapaltepec, with its reeds at the end of the lake, and its
dead, dead plaza, its dead dry houses of black adobe, its
ruined streets, its strange, buried silence, like Pompeii.

Kate knew it. So strange and deathlike, it frightened
her, and mystified her.

But to-day 1 To-day she would not loiter by the shore
all morning. She must go to Jamiltepec in a motor-boat,
to see Ram6n. To talk to liim even about marrying
Cipriano.

Ah, how could she marry Cipriano, and give her body to
this death ? Take the weight of this darkness on her
breast, the heaviness of this strange gloom. Die before
dying, and pass away whilst still beneath the sun?

Ah no 1 Better to escape to the white men’s lands.

But she went to arrange with Alonso for the motor-
boat.

CHAP : XVn. FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP.

The President of the Republic, as a new broom, had
been sweeping perhaps a little too clean for the common
liking, so there was a “ rebellion.” It was not a very
large one. But it meant, of course, banditry, robbery,
and cowed villages.

Ramon was determined to keep free from the taint of
politics. But already the Church, and with the Church,
the Knights of Cortes and a certain “ black ” faction, was
preparing against him. The priests began to denounce
him from the pulpits—but not very loudly—as an ambi¬
tious Anti-Christ. With Cipriano beside him, however,
and with Cipriano the army of the west, he had not much

to fear.

But it was possible Cipriano would have to march away

in defence of the government.

“ Above all things,” said Ramon, “ I don’t want to
acquire a political smell. I don’t want to be pushed in
the direction of any party. Unless I can stand uncon¬
taminated, I had better abandon everything. But the
Church will push me over to the socialists—and the
socialists will betray me on the first opportunity. It is
not myself. It is the new spirit. The surest way to kill
it—and it can be killed, like any other living thing is to

get it connected with any political party.”

“ Why don’t you see the Bishop?” said Cipnajio. 1
will see him too. Am I to be chief of the division in the

west, for nothing?” T

“ Yes,” said Ram6n slowly. “ I will see Jimenez. 1

have thought of it. Yes, I intend to use every means in
my power.—Montes will stand for us, because he hates the
Church and hates any hint of dictation from outside. He
sees the possibility of a ‘ national ’ church. Though my¬
self, I don’t care about national churches. Only one has
to speak the language of one’s own people. You know
the priests are forbidding the people to read the Hymns f
“What does that matter?” said Cipriano. these

people are nothing if not perverse, nowadays. Ihey will

read them all the more.”

264

*

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

265

“ Maybe !—I shall take no notice. 1*11 let my new
legend, as they call it, grow while the earth is moist. But
we have to keep our. eye very close on all the little bunches
of * interests V’

** Ramon !” said Cipriano. “ If you can turn Mexico
entirely into a Quetzalcoatl country, what then ?”

** I shall be First Man of Ouetzalcoatl—I know no more.”

“ You won’t trouble about the rest of the world?”

Ramon smiled. Already he saw in Cipriano’s eye the
gleam of a Holy War.

“ I would like,” he said smiling, “ to be one of the
Initiates of the Earth. One of the Initiators. Every
country its own Saviour, Cipriano : or every people its own
Saviour. And the First Men of every people, forming a
Natural Aristocracy of the World. One must have aristo¬
crats, that we know. But natural ones, not artificial. And
in some way the world must be organically united : the
world of man. But in the concrete, not in the abstract.
Leagues and Covenants and International Programmes.
Ah ! Cipriano! it’s like an international pestilence.
The leaves of one great tree can’t hang on the
boughs of another great tree. The races of the
earth are like trees, in the end they neither mix nor
mingle. They stand out of each other’s way, like trees.
Or else they crowd on one another, and their roots grapple,
and it is the fight to the death.—Only from the flowers there
is commingling. And the flowers of every race are the
natural aristocrats of that race. And the spirit of the
world can fly from flower to flower, like a humming bird,
fu J” ow *y fertilise the great trees in their blossoms. Only
the Natural Aristocrats can rise above their nation; and
even then they do not rise beyond their race. Only the
Natural Aristocrats of the World can be international, or
cosmopolitan, or cosmic. It has always been so. The
peoples are no more capable of it, than the leaves of the
^otree are capable of attaching themselves to the pine.
]T*rVf 1 wa “ t Mexicans to learn the name of Quetzalcoatl,

nwn ifi Ca T C 1 ^ an . t 1 them to speak with the tongues of their
wn blood. I wish the Teutonic world would once more

And i^STSr °T) T vr r aDd Wotan ’ and the tree Igdrasil.

th? l *l U ' d ' C W ° rld would see ’ honestly, that in

mistletoe is their mystery, and that they themselves

i*

266

THE PLUMED SERPENT

are the Tuatha De Danaan, alive, but submerged. And a
new Hermes should come back to the Mediterranean, and
a new Ashtaroth to Tunis; and Mithras again to Persia,
and Brahma unbroken to India, and the oldest of dragons
to China. Then I, Cipriano, I, First Man of Quetzalcoatl,
with you. First Man of Huitzilopochtli, and perhaps your
wife, First Woman of Itzpapalotl, could we not meet, with
sure souls, the other great aristocrats of the world, the
First Man of Wotan and the First Woman of Freya, First
Lord of Hermes, and the Lady of Astarte, the Best-Born
of Brahma, and the Son of the Greatest Dragon? I tell
you, Cipriano, then the earth might rejoice, when the First
Lords of the West met the First Lords of South and East,
in the Valley of the Soul. Ah, the earth has Valleys of the
Soul, that are not cities of commerce and industry. And
the mystery is one mystery, but men must see it differently.
The hibiscus and the thistle and the gentian all flower on
the Tree of Life, but in the world they are far apart; and
must be. And I am hibiscus and you are a yucca flower,
and your Caterina is a wild daffodil, and my Carlota is a
white pansy. Only four of us, yet we make a curious
bunch. So it is. The men and women of the earth are not
manufactured goods, to be interchangeable. But the Tree
of Life is one tree, as we know when our souls open in the
last blossoming. We can’t change ourselves, and we don’t
want to. But when our souls open out in the final blossom¬
ing, then as blossoms we share one mystery with all
blossoms, beyond the knowledge of any leaves and stems
and roots : something transcendent.

“ But it doesn’t matter. At the present time I have to
fight my way in Mexico, and you have to fight yours. So

let us go and do it.”

He went away to his workshops and his men who were
labouring under his directions, while Cipriano sat down to
his correspondence, and his military planning.

They were both interrupted by the thudding of a motor-
boat entering the little bay. It was Kate, escorted by the

black-scarved Juana. , , ,

Ramon, in his white clothes with the blue-and-black

figured sash, and the big hat with the turquoise-inlaid Eye
of Quetzalcoatl, went down to meet her. She was in white,
too, with a green hat and the shawl of pale yellow silk.

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

267

“ I was so glad to come again,” she said, holding out
her hand to him. “ Jamiltepec has become a sort of Mecca
to me, my inside yearns for it.”

** Then why don’t you come oftener? I wish you would
come.”

“ I am afraid of intruding.”

“ No l You could help if you would.”

“ Oh 1 ” she said. “ I am so frightened, and so sceptical
of big undertakings. I think it is because, at the very
bottom of me, I dislike the masses of people—anywhere.
I’m afraid I rather despise people; I don’t want them to
touch me, and I don’t want to touch them.—So how could
I pretend to join any—any—any sort of Salvation Army ?—
which is a horrid way of putting it.”

Don Ramon laughed.

“ I do myself,” he said. “ I detest and despise masses
of people. But these are my own people.”

“ I, ever since I was a child, since I can remember.—
They say of me, when I was a little girl of four, and my
parents were having a big dinner party, they had the nurse
bring me in to say good-night to all the people they had
there dressed up and eating and drinking. And I suppose
they all said nice things to me, as they do. I only
answered : You are all monkeys! It was a great success 1—
But I felt it even as a child, and I feel it now. People are
all monkeys to me, performing in different ways.”

“ Even the people nearest you ? ”

Kate hesitated. Then she confessed, rather unwillingly :

** Yes! I’m afraid so. Both my husbands—even
Joachim—they seemed, somehow, so obstinate in their
little stupidities—rather like monkeys. I felt a terrible
revulsion from Joachim when he was dead. I thought :
What peaked monkey is that, that I have been losing my
blood about.—Do you think it’s rather awful ? ”

‘‘I do 1 But then I think we all feel like that, at
moments. Or we would if we dared. It’s only one of
our moments.”

“ Sometimes,” said she, “ I think that is my permanent
feelmg towards people. I like the world, the sky and the
earth and the greater mystery beyond. But people—yes,
they are all monkeys to me.”

He could see that, at the bottom of her soul, it was true.

268

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Puras monas ! ” he said to himself in Spanish. “ Y lo
que hacen, puras monerias.”

“ Pure monkeys ! And the things they do, sheer monkey-
dom ! ” Then he added : “ Yet you have children ! ”

“ Yes ! Yes 1” she said, struggling with herself. “ My
first husband’s children.” >

“ And they?— monas y no mas? ”

“ No ! ” she said, frowning and looking angry with her¬
self. “ Only partly.”

“ It is bad,” he said, shaking his head. “ But then ! ”
he added.—“ What are my own children to me, but little
monkeys? And their mother—and their mother—Ah, no!
Senora Caterina ! It is no good. One must be able to dis¬
entangle oneself from persons, from people. If I go to a
rose-bush, to be intimate with it, it is a nasty thing that
hurts me. One most disentangle oneself from persons and
personalities, and see people as one sees the trees in the
landscape. People in some way dominate you. In some
way, humanity dominates your consciousness. So you must
hate people and humanity, and you want to escape. But
there is only one way of escape : to turn beyond them, to
the greater life.”

« But I do ! ” cried Kate. “ I do nothing else. When
I was with Joachim absolutely alone in a cottage, doing all
the work myself, and knowing nobody at all, just living,
and feeling the greater thing all the time; then I was free,

1 was happy.” , , . „

«« But he? ” said Ram6n. “ Was he free and happy?

“ H e -was really. But that’s where the monkeyishness
comes in. He wouldn’t let himself be content. He insisted
on having people and a cause , just to torture himself with.”

“ Then why didn’t you live in your cottage quite alone,
and without him ? *’ he said. “ Why do you travel, and
see people? ”

She was silent, very angry. She knew she could not live
quite alone. The vacuity crushed her. She needed a man
there, to stop the gap, and to keep her balanced. But even
when she had him, in her heart of hearts she despised him,
as she despised the dog and the cat. Between herself and
humanity there was the bond of subtle, helpless antagonism.

She was naturally quite free-handed and she left people
their liberty. Servants would get attached to her, and casual

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

269

people all liked and admired her. She had a strong life-
flow of her own, and a certain assertive joie de vivre.

But underneath it all was the unconquerable dislike,
almost disgust of people. More than hate, it was disgust.
Whoever it was, wherever it was, however it was, after a
little while this disgust overcame her. Her mother, her
father, her sisters, her first husband, even her children whom
she loved, and Joachim, for whom she had felt such pas¬
sionate love, even these, being near her, filled her with a
certain disgust and repulsion after a little while, and she
longed to fling them down the great and final oubliette.

But there is no great and final oubliette : or at least, it
is never final, until one has flung oneself down.

So it was with Kate. Till she flung herself down the last
dark oubliette of death, she would never escape from her
deep, her bottomless disgust with human beings. Brief con¬
tacts were all right, thrilling even. But close contacts, or
long contacts, were short and long revulsions of violent
disgust.

She and Ramdn had sat down on a bench under the white¬
flowering oleander of the garden downstairs. His face was
impassive and still. In the stillness, with a certain pain
and nausea, he realised the state she was in, and realised
that his own state, as regards personal people, was the
same. Mere personal contact, mere human contact filled
him, too, with disgust. Carlota disgusted him. Kate her¬
self disgusted him. Sometimes, Cipriano disgusted him.

But this was because, or when, he met them on a merely
human, personal plane. To do so was disaster; it filled him
with disgust of them and loathing of himself.

He had to meet them on another plane, where the contact
was different; intangible, remote, and without intimacy.
His soul was concerned elsewhere. So that the quick of
him need not be bound to anybody. The quick of a man
must turn to God alone : in some way or other.

With Cipriano he was most sure. Cipriano and he, even
when they embraced each other with passion, when they
met after an absence, embraced in the recognition of each

other’s eternal and abiding loneliness; like the Morning
Star.

But women would not have this. They wanted intimacy

and intimacy means disgust. Carlota wanted to be

270

THE PLUMED SERPENT

eternally and closely identified with Ram6n, consequently
she hated him and hated everything which she thought
drew him away from this eternal close identification with
herself. It was just a horror, and he knew it.

Men and women should know that they cannot, ab¬
solutely, meet on earth. In the closest kiss, the dearest
touch, there is the small gulf which is none the less com¬
plete because it is so narrow, so nearly non-existent. They
must bow and submit in reverence, to the gulf. Even
though I eat the body and drink the blood of Christ,
Christ is Christ and I am I, and the gulf is impassable.
Though a woman be dearer to a man than his own life,
yet he is he and she is she, and the gulf can never close
up. Any attempt to close it is a violation, and the crime
against the Holy Ghost.

That which we get from the beyond, we get it alone. The
final me I am, comes from the farthest off, from the Morning
Star. The rest is assembled. All that of me which is
assembled from the mighty cosmos can meet and touch
all that is assembled in the beloved. But this is never
the quick. Never can be.

If we would meet in the quick, we must give up the
assembled self, the daily I, and putting off ourselves one
after the other, meet unconscious in the Morning Star.
Body, soul and spirit can be transfigured into the Morning
Star. But without transfiguration we shall never get there.
We shall gnash at the leash.

Ram6n knew what it was to gnash at his leashes. He
had gnashed himself almost to pieces, before he had found
the way to pass out in himself, in the quick of himself, to
the Quick of all being and existence, which he called the
Morning Star, since men must give all things names. To
pass in the quick of himself, with transfiguration, to the
Morning Star, and there, there alone meet his fellow man.

He knew what it was to fail even now, and to keep on
failing. With Carlota he failed absolutely. She claimed
him and he restrained himself in resistance. Even his very
naked breast, when Carlota was there, was self-conscious
and assertively naked. But then that was because shs
claimed it as her property.

When men meet at the quick of all things, they are
neither naked nor clothed; in the transfiguration they arc

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

271

just complete, they are not seen in part. The final perfect
strength has also the power of innocence.

Sitting on the seat beside Kate, Ram6n was sad with the
sense of heaviness and inadequacy. His third Hymn was
angry and bitter. Carlota almost embittered his soul. In
Mexico, turbulent fellows had caught at his idea and bur¬
lesqued it. They had invaded one of the churches of the
city, thrown out the sacred images, and hung in their
place the grotesque papier-mache Judas figures which the
Mexicans explode at Easter time. This of course made a
scandal. And Cipriano, whenever he was away on his own
for some time, slipped back into the inevitable Mexican
General, fascinated by the opportunity for furthering his
own personal ambition and imposing his own personal will.
Then came Kate, with this centre of sheer repudiation deep
in the middle of her, the will to explode the world.

He felt his spirits sinking again, his limbs going like lead.
There is only one thing that a man really wants to do, all
his life; and that is, to find his way to his God, his Morning
Star, and be alone there. Then afterwards, in the Morning
Star, salute his fellow man, and enjoy the woman who has
come the long way with him.

But to find the way, far, far along, to the bright Quick
of all things, this is difficult, and required all a man's
strength and courage, for himself. If he breaks a trail
alone, it is terrible. But if every hand pulls at him, to
stay, him in the human places; if the hands of love drag
at his entrails and the hands of hate seize him by the hair,
it becomes almost impossible.

This .was how Ram6n felt at the moment :—I am
attempting the impossible. I had better either go and take
ray pleasure of life while it lasts, hopeless of the pleasure
which is beyond all pleasures. Or else I had better go
into the desert and take my way all alone, to the Star
where at last I have my wholeness, holiness. The way of
the anchorites and the men who went into the wilderness to
pray. For surely my soul is craving for her consummation,
and I am weary of the thing men call life. Living, I want
to depart to where I am.

sai 5 to himself, the woman that was with me in
the Morning Star, how glad I should be of her 1 And the
man that was with me thdre, what a delight his presence

272

THE PLUMED SERPENT

would be ! Surely the Morning Star is a meeting-ground for
us, for the joy 1

Sitting side by side on the bench, Ramon and Kate forgot
one another, she thinking back on the past, with the long
disgust of it all, he thinking on into his future, and trying
to revive his heavy spirits.

In the silence, Cipriano came out on to the balcony above,
looking around. He almost started as he saw the two
figures seated on the bench below, under the white oleander
tree, miles apart, worlds apart, in their silence.

Ramon heard the step, and glanced up.

“ We are coming up ! ” he called, rising and looking round
at Kate. “ Shall we go upstairs ? Will you drink something
cool, tepache, or squeezed oranges ? There is no ice.”

“ I would like orange juice and water,” she said.

He called to his servant and gave the order.

Cipriano was in the white pantaloons and blouse, like
Ramon. But his sash was scarlet, with black curves, some¬
thing like the markings on a snake

« I heard you come. I thought perhaps you had gone
away again,” he said, looking at her with a certain black
reproachfulness : an odd, hesitating wistfulness of the bar¬
barian, who feels himself at a loss. Then also a certain

resentment.

“ Not yet,” she said.

Ramon laughed, and flung himself into a chair.

«« The Senora Caterina thinks we are all monkeys, but
perhaps this particular monkey-show is the most amusing
after all,” he said. “ So she will see a little more of

it **

‘Cipriano, a real Indian, was offended in his pride, and
the little black imperial on his chin seemed to become por-

« That’s rather an unfair way of putting it! ” laughed

K Th‘e black eyes of Cipriano glanced at her in hostility.
He thought she was laughing at him. And so, at the depths
of her female soul, she was. She was jeering at him in¬
wardly. Which no man can stand, least of all a dark-

Sk “ NoP^he said. “There’s something else besides
that.”

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

273

“ Ab ! ” said Ramon. “ Take care ! A little mercy is a
dangerous thing.”

“ No ! Not mercy ! ” she said, flushing. “ Why are you
being horrid to me ? ”

“ Monkeys always end by being horrid to the spectators,”
said Ram6n.

She looked up at him, and caught the flash of anger in
his eyes.

“ I came,” she said, “ to hear about the Mexican pan¬
theon. I was e/en given to understand I might be ad¬
mitted.”

“ Ah, that is good ! ” laughed Ram6n. “ A rare specimen
of the female monkey has been added to the Ramon men¬
agerie 1 I am sure you would be a good draw. There have
been some pretty goddesses, I assure you, in the Aztec
pantheon.”

“ How horrid 1 ” she said.

“ Come 1 Come ! ” he cried. “ Let us keep to the bed¬
rock of things, Senora mia. We are all monkeys. Monos
somos.—Ihr seid alle Affen 1 Out of the mouths of babes
and sucklings was it spoken, as Carlota said. You see that
little male monkey, Cipriano. He had the monkey’s idea
of marrying you. Say the word. Marriage is a monkey’s
game. Say the word. He will let you go when you’ve had
enough; and he’s had enough. He is a general and a very
great jefe. He can make you monkey-queen of monkey-
Mexico, if it please you. And what should monkeys do,
but amuse themselves 1 Vamosl Embobemonos! Shall I
be priest? Vamosl Vamosl ”

He rose with sudden volcanic violence, and rushed away.

Cipriano looked at Kate in wonder. She had gone pale.

** What have you been saying to him ? ” he asked.

“ Nothing ! ” she said, rising. “ I’d better go now.”

Juana was collected; and Alonso and Kate set off back
down the lake. She sat with a certain obstinate offended-
ness under the awning of the boat. The sun was terrifically
hot, and the water blinded her. She put on black spectacles,
in which she looked a monster.

** Mucho calor, Nina! Mucho calor! ” Juana was re¬
peating behind her. The criada had evidently imbibed
tepache.

On the pale-brown water little tufts of water-hyacinth

274

THE PLUMED SERPENT

were vaguely sailing, holding up the hand of a leaf for a
sail. Everywhere the lake was dotted with these sailing
tufts. The heavy rains had washed in flood down the Lerma
river into the lake, washing the acres of Lirio loose from the
marshy end of the waters, thirty miles away, and slowly
setting them travelling over all the expanse of the inland
sea, till the shores began to be piled, and the far-off Santiago
river, which flowed out of the lake, was choked.

That day Ramon wrote his Fourth Hymn.

What Quetzalcoatl Saw in Mexico.

Who are these strange faces in Mexico?

Palefaces , yellowfaces, blackfaces? These are no
Mexicans!

Where do they come from t and why?

Lord of the Two Ways, these are the foreigners.

They come out of nowhere.

Sometimes they come to tell us things.

Mostly they are the greedy ones.

What then do they want?

They want gold, they want silver from the mountains,
And oil, much oil from the coast.

They take sugar from the tall tubes of the cane,

Wheat from the high lands, and maize;

Coffee from the bushes in the hot lands, even the juicy

rubber.

They put up tall chimneys that smoke.

And in the biggest houses they keep their machines,

that talk

And work iron elbows up and down,

And hold myriad threads from their claws 1
Wonderful are the machines of the greedy ones 1

And you , Mexicans and peons , what do you do?

We work with their machines, we work in their fields.
They give us pesos made of Mexican silver.

They are the clever ones.

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

275

Do you love them thenf
We love them not, and never.

Their faces are ugly, yet they make wonderful things.
And their wills are like their machines of iron.

What can we do ?

I see dark things rushing across the country.

Yea, Lord I Even trains and camions and automobiles.

Trains and camions, automobiles and aeroplanes.

How nice 1 says the peon, to go rushing in a train 1
How nice, to get in the camion, and for twenty centavos,
to be gone !

How nice, in the great cities, where all things rush, and
huge lights flare bright, to wander and do nothing !
How nice to sit in the cine, where the picture of all the
world dances before the eyes 1
How nice if we could take all these things away from the
foreigners, and possess them 1
Take back our lands and silver and oil, take the trains
and the factories and the automobiles
And play with them all the time 1
How nice l

Oh, fools 1 Mexicans and peons !

Who are you, to be masters of marines which you
cannot make ?

Which you can only break l

Those that can make are masters of these machines.
Not you, poor boobs.

How have these palefaces, yellowfaces crossed the waters
of the world?

Oh, fools l Mexicans and peons, with muddy hearts 1
Did they do. it by squatting on their hams ?

You do nothing but squat on your hams, and stare with
vacant eyes, and drink fire-waters, and quarrel and
stab.

And then run like surly dogs at the bidding of paleface
masters.

276

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Oh, dogs and fools, Mexicans and peons l

Watery-hearted, with wishy-washy knees.

Sulky in spirit, and inert.

What are you good for, but to be slaves, and rot away ?

|

You are not worth a god !

Lo ! the universe tangles its great dragons,

The dragons in the cosmos are stirring with anger again.

The dragon of the disappointed dead, that sleeps in the
snow-white north

Is lashing his tail in his sleep; the winds howl, the cold
rocks round.

The spirits of the cold dead whistle in the ears of the world.

Prepare for doom.

For I tell you, there are no dead dead, not even your
dead.

There are dead that sleep in the waves of the Morning
Star, with freshening limbs.

There are dead that weep in bitter rains.

There are dead that cluster in the frozen north, shudder¬
ing and chattering among the ice

And howling with hate.

There are dead that creep through the burning bowels
of the earth.

Stirring the fires to acid of bitterness.

There are dead that sit under the trees, watching with
ash-grey eyes for their victims.

There are dead that attack the sun like swarms of black
flies, to suck his life.

There are dead that stand upon you, when you go in to
your women,

And they dart to her womb, they fight for the chance to
be born, they struggle at the gate you have opened,

They gnash when it closes, and hate the one that got in
to be born again.

Child of the living dead, the dead that live and are noi
refreshed.

I tell you, sorrow upon you; you shall all cue.

And being dead, you shall not be refreshed.

There are no dead dead.

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

277

Being dead, you shall rove like dogs with broken
haunches

Seeking the offal and garbage of life, in the invisible lanes
of the air.

The dead that have mastered fire live on, salamanders, in
fire.

The dead of the water-lords rock and glimmer in the seas.

The dead of the steel machines go up in motion, away l

The dead of electric masters are electricity itself.

But the dead of those who have mastered nothing, nothing
at all,

Crawl like masterless dogs in the back streets of the air,

Creeping for the garbage of life, and biting with venomous
mouths.

Those that have mastered the forces of the world, die into
the forces, they have homes in death.

But you 1 what have you mastered, among the dragon
hosts of the cosmos ?

There are dragons of sun and ice, dragons of the moon and
the earth, dragons of salty waters, dragons of
thunder;

There is the spangled dragon of the stars at large.

And far at the centre, with one unblinking eye, the dragon
of the Morning Star.

Conquer! says the Morning Star. Pass the dragons, and
pass on to me.

For I am sweet, I am the last and the best, the pool of
new life.

But lo ! you inert ones, I will set the dragons upon you.

They shall crunch your bones.

And even then they shall spit you out, as broken-haunched
dogs,

You shall have nowhere to die into.

Lo! in the back streets of the air, dead ones are crawling
like curs !

Lo 1 I release the dragons 1 The great white one of the
north,

278

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Him of the disappointed dead, he is lashing and turning
round.

He is breathing cold corruption upon you, you shall bleed
in your chests.

I am going to speak to the dragon of the inner fires,

He who housels the dead of the guns,

To withdraw his warmth from your feet, so your feet turn
cold with death.

✓

I am about to tell the dragon of the waters to turn round
on you

And spue out corrosion into your streams, on your rains.

And I wait for the final day, when the dragon of thunder,
waking under the spider-web nets
Which you’ve thrown upon him, shall suddenly shake with

rage,

And dart bis electric needles into your bones, and curdle
your blood like milk with electric venom.

Wait! Only wait! Little by little it all shall come upon
you.

Ram6n put on his black city clothes, and a black hat,
and went himself with this hymn to the printer in the city.
The sign of Quetzalcoatl he had printed in black and red,
and the sign of the dragon, at the end, in green and black

and red. And the sheet was folded.

Six soldiers of Cipriano’s command took the bundles of
hymns by train; one to the capital, one to Puebla and
Jalapa, one to Tampico and Monterrey, one to Torreon and
Chihuahua, one to Sinaloa and Sonora, and one to the mines
in Pachucha, Guanajuato, and the central region. Each
soldier took only a hundred sheets. But in every town there
was a recognised Reader of the Hymns; or two, or three, or
four, or even ten Readers in one city. And readers who went

round to the villages. , . . ..

Because there was a strange, submerged desire m the
people for things beyond the world. They were weary of
events, and weary of news and the newspapers, weary even
of the things that are taught in education. Weary is the

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

279

spirit of man with man’s importunity. Of all things human,
and humanly invented, we have had enough, they seemed
to say. And though they took not much active notice of
the Hymns, they craved for them, as men crave for alcohol,
as a relief from the weariness and ennui of mankind’s man¬
made world*

Everywhere, in all the towns and villages, at night-time
the little flames would be seen flickering, a cluster of people
was seen, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting upon the
ground, listening to the slow voice of some Reader.

More rarely, in some small, out-of-the-way plaza, would
sound the sinister thud of the tom-tom, beating out of the
hollow of the ages. And there would be two men with white
sarapes with the blue edges. Then the singing of the Songs
of Quetzalcoatl, and perhaps the slow round dance, with the
ancient rhythm of the feet on the earth, belonging to
aboriginal America.

For the old dances of the Aztecs and the Zapotecs, of all
the submerged Indian races, are based upon the old, sinking
bird-step of the Red Indians of the north. It is in the blood
of the people; they cannot quite forget it. It comes back
to them, with a sense of fear, and joy, and relief.

Of themselves, they dared not revive the old motion, nor
stir the blood in the old way. The spell of the past is too
terrible. But in the Songs and the Hymns of Quetzalcoatl,
there spoke a new voice, the voice of a master and authority.
And though they were slow to trust, the slowest and the
most untrusting, they seized upon the new-old thrill, with
a certain fear, and joy, and relief;

The Men of Quetzalcoatl avoided the great market-places
and centres of activity. They took their stand in the little,
side places. On the rim of a fountain a man in a dark
blanket with blue borders, or with the sign of Quetzalcoatl
in his hat, would sit down and begin to read aloud. It was
enough. The people lingered to listen. He would read to
the end, then say : “ I have finished this reading of the
Fourth Hymn of Quetzalcoatl. Now I will begin again.”

In this way, by a sort of far-away note in the voice, and
by the slow monotony of repetition, the thing would drift
darkly into the consciousness of the listeners.

Already in the beginning there had been the scandal ■ of
the Judases. Holy Week, in Mexico City, is, to all appear-

280

THE PLUMED SERPENT

ance, the great week of Judas. Everywhere you see meu
carrying home in triumph the great, gaudily-varnished dolls
of papier-mache. They are all men-dolls, more or less life¬
like grotesque. Most frequently it is a fat Mexican-Spanish
hacendado, landowner and big farmer, who is represented
with his tight trousers, sticking-out belly, and huge up¬
turned moustaches. The old-fashioned patrdn. Some of
the figures are like Punch, some are like harlequin. But they
all have rosy faces and the white man’s get-up. You never
see the dark-faced image of a native-blooded Mexican;
always a stiff, haughty grotesque of a white man.

And all these are Judases. Judas is the fun of the fair,
the victim, the big man of Holy Week, just as the Skeleton,
and the skeleton on horseback, is the idol of the first week
id November, the days of the dead and of all the saints.

On Easter Saturday the Judases are hung from the bal¬
conies, the string is lighted, and at length, bang! Shrieks
of joy, Judas has exploded into nothingness, from a big
cracker in the middle of him 1—All the town is popping with
Judases.

There was the scandal of the Holy Images thrown out of
one of the churches in Mexico City, and these Judases put
in their place. The Church began to move.

But then the Church in Mexico has to move gingerly; it
is not popular, and its claws are cut. The priest may not
ring the church bells for more than three minutes. Neither
priests nor monks may wear any habit in the street, beyond
the hideous black vest and white collar of the Protestant
clergy. So that the priest shows himself as little as possible
in the street, and practically never in the chief streets and

the chief plazas. .

Nevertheless, he still has influence. Processions in the

streets are forbidden, but not sermons from the pulpit, nor
advice from the confessional. Montes, the President, had
no love for the church, and was meditating the expulsion
of all foreign priests. The Archbishop himself was an

Italian. But he was also a fighter.

He gave orders to all the priests, to forbid the people from
listening to anything concerned with Quetzalcoatl, to destroy
any hymn-sheet that might fall into their hands, and to
prevent as far as possible the Hymns from being read, and
the Songs from being sung, in the parishes.

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

281

But Montes had given orders to the police and the mili¬
tary to afford such protection to the Men of Quetzalcoatl
as was accorded to any other law-abiding citizen.

Mexico is not Mexico for nothing, however, and already
blood had beeen shed on both sides. This Ramon particu¬
larly wanted to avoid, as he felt that violent death was not
so easily wiped out of the air and out of the souls of men,
as spilt blood was washed off the pavements.

Therefore, when he was in the City, he asked the Bishop
of the West if he would consent to an interview with himself
and Don Cipriano, and would he name the place. The
Bishop—who was an old friend and adviser of Carlota, and
who knew Ram6n well enough, replied that he should be
pleased to see Don Ramon and the Serior General the next
day, if they would be so good as to come to his house.

The Bishop no longer occupied the great episcopal palace.
This was turned into the post-office building. But he had
a large house not far from the Cathedral, which had been
presented by the faithful.

Ram6n and Cipriano found the thin old man in a dusty,
uninteresting library, waiting. He wore a simple black
cassock, not too clean, with purple buttons. He received
Ram6n, who was in a black town suit, and Cipriano, who
was in uniform, with an affable manner and suspicious looks.
But he played at being the lively, genial old bird.

“ Ah, Don Ram6n, it is long since I saw you 1 How goes
it, eh? Well, well? That is good 1 That is very good 1 ”
And he patted Ramon on the sleeve like a fussy old uncle.
“ Ah, my General, much honour, much honour ! Welcome
to this poor house of yours. It is the house of your Honour 1
To serve you 1 Gentlemen ! Won’t you take a seat ? ”

They all sat down, in the dusty, dreary room, in the old
leather chairs. The Bishop nervously looked at his thin old
hands, at the fine, but rather dull amethyst ring he wore.

“ Good ! Senores ! ” he said, glancing up with his little
black eyes. “ At your service ! Entirely at the service of
your Honours.”

“ Dona Carlota is in the city. Father. You have seen
her ? said Ram6n.

Yes, son of mine,” said the Bishop.

“ Then you know the latest news about me. She told you
everything.” J

282

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Somewhat 1 Somewhat! She spoke somewhat of you,
the poor little thing. Thanks to God she has her sons with
her. They are safely back in their native country, in good
health. ”

“ Did you see them ? ”

“ Yes ! Yes 1 Two of my dearest children ! Very sym¬
pathetic, very intelligent, like their father; and, like him,
promising to be of very handsome presence. Yes 1 Yes !
Smoke if you will, my General. Don’t hesitate.”

Cipriano lit a cigarette. From old associations, he was
nervous, albeit amused.

“ You know all about what I want to do. Father? ” said
Ramon.

“ I don’t know all, son of mine, but I know enough. I
wouldn’t want to hear more. Eh ! ” he sighed. “ It is
very sad.”

“ Not so very sad, Father, if we don’t make it sad.
Why make a sad thing out of it, Father? We are in Mexico
for the most part Indians. They cannot understand the
high Christianity, Father, and the Church knows it. Chris¬
tianity is a religion of the spirit, and must needs be under¬
stood if it is to have any effect. The Indians cannot under¬
stand it, any more than the rabbits of the hills.”

“ Very good ! Very good ! Son of mine ! But we can
convey it to them. The rabbits of the hills are in the hands
of God.”

« No, Father, it is impossible. And without a religion
that will connect them with the universe, they will all
perish. Only religion will serve; not socialism, nor educa¬
tion, nor anything.”

“ Thou speakest well,” said the Bishop.

“ The rabbits of the hills may be in the hands of God,
Father. But they are at the mercy of men. The same with
Mexico. The people sink heavier and heavier into inertia,
and the Church cannot help them, because the Church does
not possess the key-word to the Mexican soul.”

“ Doesn’t the Mexican Soul know the Voice of God? ”

said the Bishop. .

“ Your own children may know your voice, Father. tJut
if you go out to speak to the birds on the lake, or the deer
among the mountains, will they know your voice ? Will
they wait and listen ? ”

288

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

« Who knows ? It is said they waited to listen to the
Holy Francisco of Assisi. ,,

« Now, Father, we must speak to the Mexicans in their
own language, and give them the clue-word to their own
souls. I shall say Quetzalcoatl. If I am wrong, let me
perish. But I am not wrong.”

The Bishop fidgetted rather restlessly. He didn’t want
to hear all this. And he did not want to answer. He was
impotent anyhow.

“ Your Church is the Catholic Church, Father? ”

“ Surely ! ” said the Bishop.

“ And Catholic Church means the Church of All, the
Universal Church ? ”

“ Surely, son of mine.”

“ Then why not let it be really catholic? Why call it
catholic, when it is not only just one among many churches,
but is even hostile to all the rest of the churches? Father,
why not let the Catholic Church become really the universal
Church ? ”

“ It is the Universal Church of Christ, my son.”

“ Why not let it be the Universal Church of Mohammet
as well; since ultimately, God is One God, but the peoples
speak varying languages, and each needs its own prophet
to speak with its own tongue. The Universal Church of
Christ, and Mohammet, and Buddha, and Quetzalcoatl,
and all the others —that would be a Catholic Church,
Father.”

** You speak of things beyond me,” said the Bishop,
turning his ring.

“ Not beyond any man,” said Don Ram6n. “ A Catholic
Church is a church of all the religions, a home on earth for
all the prophets and the Christs. A big tree under which
every man who acknowledges the greater life of the soul
can sit and be refreshed. Isn’t that the Catholic Church,
Father? ”

• *l Aias » m F s . on » 1 know the Apostolic Church of Christ
in Rome, of which I am a humble servant. I do not under¬
stand these clever things yOu are saying to me.”

I am asking you for peace, Father. I am not one who
hateB the Church of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church.

ut m Mexico I think it has no place. When my heart is
not bitter, I am grateful forever to Christ, the Son of God.

284

THE PLUMED SERPENT

The affair of the Judases grieves me more than it does you,
and the affairs of bloodshed are far bitterer to me.”

“ I am no innovator, my son, to provoke bloodshed.”

“ Listen ! I am going to remove the holy images from
the church at Sayula, with reverence, and with reverence
burn them upon the lake. Then I shall put the image of
Quetzalcoatl in the church at Sayula.”

The Bishop looked up furtively. For some moments he
said nothing. But his silence was furtive, cornered.

“ Would you dare do that, Don Ramon? ” he said.

“ Yes ! And I shall not be prevented. General Viedma
is with me.”

The Bishop glanced sideways at Cipriano.

“ Certainly,” said Cipriano.

** Nevertheless it is illegal,” said the Bishop, with acid
bitterness.

“ What is illegal in Mexico? ” said Ramon. “ What is
weak is illegal. I will not be weak, My Lord.”

“ Lucky you ! ” said the Bishop, lifting his shoulders.

There was a break of silence.

“ No 1 ” said Ramon. “ I come to ask you for peace.
Tell the Archbishop what I say. Let him tell the Cardinals
and the Pope, that the time has come for a Catholic Church
of the Earth, the Catholic Church of All the Sons of Men.
The Saviours are more than one, and let us pray they will
still be increased. But God is one God, and the Saviours
are the Sons of the One God. Let the Tree of the Church
spread its branches over all the earth, and shelter the
prophets in its shade, as they sit and speak their knowledge
of the beyond.”

«« Are you one of these prophets, Don Ram6n ? ”

“ I surely am, Father. And I woyld speak about Quet¬
zalcoatl in Mexico, and build his Church here.”

“ Nay ! You would invade the Churches of Christ and

the Blessed Virgin, I heard you say.”

« You know my intentions. But I do not want to quarrel
with the Church of Rome, nor have bloodshed and enmity.
Father. Can you not understand me ? Should there not be
peace between the men who strive down their different ways

to the God-Mystery? ” #

€€ Once more desecrate the altars ! Bring in strange idols.
Burn the images of Our Lord and Our Lady, and ask for

FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP

285

peace? ” said the poor Bishop, who helplessly longed to be
left alone.

“ All that, Father,” said Ramon.

“ Son, what can I answer? You are a good man smitten
with the madness of pride. Don Cipriano is one more
Mexican general. I am the poor old Bishop of this diocese,
faithful servant of the Holy Church, humble child of the
Holy Father in Rome. What can I do ? What can I
answer? Take me out to the cemetery and shoot me at
once, General ! ”

“ I don’t want to,” said Cipriano.

“ It will end like that,” said the Bishop.

“ But why? ” cried Don Ramon. “ Is there no sense in
what I say? Cannot you understand? ”

“ My son, my understanding goes no further than my
faith, my duty, will allow. I am not a clever man. I live
by faith, and my duty to my sacred office. Understand that
I do not understand.”

“ Good-day, Father! ” said Ram6n, suddenly rising.

“ Go with God, my son,” said the Bishop, rising and
lifting his fingers.

“ Adios, Senor! ” said Cipriano, clicking his spurs, and
putting his hand on his sword as he turned to the door.

“ Adios, Senor General,” said the Bishop, darting after
them his eyes of old malice, which they could feel in their
backs.

“ He will say nothing,” said Cipriano, as he and Ram6n
went down the steps. “ The old jesuit, he only wants to
keep his job and his power, and prevent the heart’s beating.
I know them. All they treasure, even more than their
money, is their centipede power over the frightened people;
especially over the women.”

I didn’t know you hated them,” laughed Ram6n.

“ Waste no more breath on them, my dear one,” said

Cipriano. “ Go forward, you can walk over broken snakes
such as those.”

As they went on foot past the post-office square, where
the modern scribes at little tables under the arches sat
tappmg out letters on their typewriters for the poor and
i literate, who waited with their few centavos to have their
messages turned into florid Castilian, Ram6n and Cipriano
met with an almost startled respect.

280

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Why talk to the Bishop?—he doesn’t exist any more.
I hear his Knights of Cortes had a big dinner the other
evening, and it is said—I don’t believe it—that they drank
oaths in blood to have my life and yours. But I think the
oaths of the Catholic Dames would frighten me more. Why,
if a man stops to unfasten his trousers to make water, the
Knights of Cortes run for their lives, thinking the pistol is
pointed at them. Don’t think about them, man ! Don’t
try to conciliate them. They will only puff up and become
insolent, thinking you are afraid of them. Six soldiers will
trample down all that dirt,” said the General.

It was the city, and the spirit of the city.

Cipriano had a suite in the big Palace on the Plaza de
Armas.

“ If I marry,” he said, as they passed into the stone
patio, where soldiers stood at attention, “ I shall take a
house in the colony, to be more private.”

Cipriano in town was amusing. He seemed to exude pride
and arrogant authority as he walked about. But his black
eyes, glancing above his fine nose and that little goat beard,
were not to be laughed at. They seemed to get everything,
in the stab of a glance. A demoniacal little fellow.

CHAP : XVIII. AUTO DA FE.

Ramon saw Carlota and his boys in the city, but it was a
rather fruitless meeting. The elder boy was just uncom¬
fortable in the presence with his father, but the younger,
Cyprian, who was delicate and very intelligent, had a rather
lofty air of displeasure with his parent.

“ Do you know what they sing, papa? ” he said.

“ Not all the things they sing,” said Ramon.

“ They sing—” the boy hesitated. Then, in his clear
young voice, he piped up, to the tune of La Cucaracha:

“ Don Ram6n don’t drink, don’t smoke.

Dona Carlota wished he would.

He’s going to wear the sky-blue cloak
That he’s stole from the Mother of God.”

“ No, I’m not,” said Ram6n, smiling. ” Mine’s got a
snake and a bird in the middle, and black zigzags and a red
fringe. You’d better come and see it.”

“ No, papa 1 I don’t want to.”

“ Why not ? ”

” I don’t want to be mixed up in this affair. It makes
us all look ridiculous. 11

But how do you think you look, anyhow, in your striped
little sailor suit and your little saintly look ? We’d better
dress you as the Infant Jesus.”

No, papa 1 You are in bad taste. One doesn’t sav
those things.” J

“ Now you’ll have to confess to a fib. You say one

doesn t say those things, when I, who am your father, said

em only a moment ago, and you heard me.”

t( mea n good people don’t. Decent people.”

you ’ U m aVe confess again, for calling your
father indecent.— 1 Terrible child ! ”

silence for a whU^’ t “ rS 1056 t0 “* eyeS ' There was

Rarn6n, tomboys. *° C ° me JamUte P ec f ” 8aid

Yes! ” said the elder boy, slowly. “ I want to come

287

285

THE PLUMED SERPENT

and bathe in the lake, and have a boat. But—they sav it
is impossible.”

“ Why ? ”

They say you make yourself a peon, in your clothes.” —
The boy was shy.

“ They’re very nice clothes, you know. Nicer than those
little breeches of yours.”

“ They say, also, that you pretend to be the Aztec god
Quetzalcoatl.”

“ Not at all. I only pretend that the Aztec god Quet¬
zalcoatl is coming back to the Mexicans.”

“ But, papa, it is not true.”

“ How do you know? ”

“ Because it is impossible.”

“ Why? ”

“ There never was any Quetzalcoatl, except idols.”

“ Is there any Jesus, except images ? ”

“ Yes, papa.”

“ Where? ”

“ In heaven.”

“ Then in heaven there is also Quetzalcoatl. And what
is in heaven is capable of coming back to earth. Don’t you
believe me ? ”

“ I can’t.”

“ Then go unbelieving,” said tne father, laughing at them
and rising to leave them.

It is very bad that they sing songs about you, and
put mama in; like about Pancho Villa,” said the younger
boy. “ It hurts me very much.”

“ Rub it with Vapor-rub, my pet,” said Ram6n. “ Rub
it with Vapor-rub, where it hurts you.”

“ What a real bad man you are, papa ! ”

“ What a real good child are you, my son ! Isn’t that

so? ”

“ I don’t know, papa. I only know you are bad.”

“ Oh 1 Oh ! Is that all they teach thee at thy American

school ? ”

“ Next term,” said Ciprianito, “ I want to change my
name. I don’t want to be called Carrasco any more. When
thou art in the newspapers, they will laugh at us.”

«* Oh ! Oh ! I am laughing at thee now, little frog 1
What name wilt thou choose then ? Espina, perhaps. Thou

AUTO DA FE

280

knowest Carrasco is a wild bush, on the moors in Spain,
where we come from. Wilt thou be the little thorn on the
bush? Call thyself Espina, thou art a sprig of the old tree.
Entonces, Adios ! Senor Espina Espinita ! ”

“ Adios ! ” said the boy abruptly, flushing with rage.

Ramon took a motor-car to Sayula, for there was a made
road. But already the rains were washing it away. The
car lurched and bumped in the great gaps. In one place, a
camion lay on its back, where it had overturned.

On the flat desert, there were already small smears of
water, and the pink cosmos flowers, and the yellow, were
just sprouting their tufts of buds. The hills in the distance
were going opaque, as leaves came out on the invisible trees
and bushes. The earth was coming to life.

Ram6n called in Sayula at Kate’s house. She was out,
but the wild Concha came scouring across the beach, to fetch
her.—“ There is Don Ram6n 1 There is Don Ram6n ”

Kate hurried home, with sand in her shoes.

She thought Ram6n looked tired, and, in his black suit,
sinister.

“ I didn’t expect you,” she said.

“ I am on my way back from town.”

He sat very still, with that angry look on his creamy
dark face, and he kept pushing back his black moustache
from his closed, angry lips.

“ Did you see anybody in town? ” she asked.

“ I saw Don Cipriano—and Dona Carlota, and my boys 1 ”

“ Oh, how nice for you l Are they quite well ? ”

** In excellent health, I believe.”

She laughed suddenly.

“ You are still cross,” she said. “ Is it about the monkeys
still ? ”

“ Senora,” he said, leaning forward, so that his black
hair dropped a little on his brow, “ in monkeydom, I don’t

know who is prince. But in the kingdom of fools, I believe
it is I.”

“ Why? ” she said.

And as he did not answer, she added r

It must be a comfort to be a prince, even of fools.'*

He looked daggers at her, then burst into a laugh.

Oh, Senora mia 1 What ails us men, when we are
always wanting to be good? ”

K '

290

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Are you repenting of it? ” she laughed.

“ Yes ! ” he said. “ I am a prince of fools ! Why have
I started this Quetzalcoatl business? Why? Pray tell me
why ? ”

“ I suppose you wanted to.”

He pondered for a time, pushing up his moustache.

“ Perhaps it is better to be a monkey than a fool. I
object to being called a monkey, nevertheless. Carlota is
a monkey, no more; and my two boys are prize young
monkeys in sailor suits. And I am a fool. Yet what is the
difference between a fool and a monkey ? ”

“ Quien sabe ? ” said Kate.

“ One wants to be good, and the other is sure he is
good. So I make a fool of myself. They are sure they are
always good, so that makes monkeys of them. Oh, if only
the world would blow up like a bomb 1 ”

“ It won’t! ” said Kate.

“ True enough.—Ah, well 1 ”

He drew himself erect, pulling himself together.

“ Do you think, Senora Caterina, you might marry our
mutual General? ” Rarabn had put himself aside again.

“ I— I don’t know 1 ” stammered Kate. “ I hardly

think so.”

“ He is not sympathetic to you at all ? ”

“ Yes. He is. He is alive, and there is even a certain
fascination about him.—But one shouldn’t try marrying a
man of another race, do you think, even if he were more

sympathetic ? ” . .

“ Ah I ” sighed Ramon. “ It’s no good generalising. It s

no good marrying anybody, unless there will be a real fusion
somewhere.”

“ And I feel there wouldn’t,” said Kate. “ I feel he just
wants something of me; and perhaps I just want something
of him. But he would never meet me. He would never
come forward himself, to meet me. He would come to take
something from me and I should have to let him. And I
don’t want merely that. I want a man who will come half¬
way, just half-way, to meet me.”

Don Ramon pondered, and shook his head.

“ you are right,” he said. “ Yet, in these matters, one
never knows what is half-way, nor where it is. A woman
who just wants to be taken, and then to cling on, is *

AUTO DA FE

291

parasite. And a man who wants just to take, without

giving, is a creature of prey.”

“ And I’m afraid Don Cipriano might be that,” said Kate.

“ Possibly,” said Ramon. “ He is not so with me. But
perhaps he would be, if we did not meet—perhaps it is our
half-way—in some physical belief that is at the very middle
of us, and which we recognise in one another. Don’t you
think there might be that between you and him ? ”

“ I doubt if he’d feel it necessary, with a woman. A
woman wouldn’t be important enough.”

Ram6n was silent.

“ Perhaps ! ” he said. “ With a woman, a man always
wants to let himself go. And it is precisely with a woman
that he should never let himself go. It is precisely with a
woman that he should never let himself go, but stick to his
innermost belief, and meet her just there. Because when
the innermost belief coincides in them both, if it’s physical,
there, and then, and nowhere else, they can meet. And it’s
no good unless there is a meeting. It’s no good a man
ravishing a woman, and it’s absolutely no good a woman
ravishing a man. It’s a sin, that is. There is such a thing
as sin, and that’s the centre of it. Men and women keep on
ravishing one another. Absurd as it may sound, it is not I
who would ravish Carlota. It is she who would ravish me.
Strange and absurd and a little shameful, it is true.—Letting
oneself go, is either ravishing or being ravished. Oh, if we
could only abide by our own souls, and meet in the abiding
place.—Senora, I have not a very great respect for myself.
Woman and I have failed with one another, and it is a bad
failure to have in the middle of oneself.”

Kate looked at him in wonder, with a little fear. Why
was he confessing to her? Was he going to love her? She
almost suspended her breathing. He looked at her with a
sort of sorrow on his brow, and in his dark eyes, anger,
Ve «< a ^° n ’ w * s< ^ om » an d a dull pain.

“ I am sorry,” he went on, “ that Carlota and I are a 9
we are with one another. Who am I, even to talk about
ijuetzalcoatl, when my heart is hollow with anger against
the woman I have married and the children she bore me.—
we never met in our souls, she and I. At first I loved her,
and she wanted me to ravish her. Then after a while a
man becomes uneasy. He can’t keep on wanting to ravish

292

THE PLUMED SERPENT

a woman, the same woman. He has revulsions. Then she
loved me, and she wanted to ravish me. And I liked it for
a time. But she had revulsions too. The eldest boy is
really my boy, when I ravished her. And the youngest is
her boy, when she ravished me. See how miserable it is !
And now we can never meet; she turns to her crucified
Jesus, and I to my uncrucified and uncrucifiable Quetzal-
coatl, who at least cannot be ravished.”

“ And I’m sure you won’t make him a ravisher,” she
said.

“ Who knows ? If I err, it will be on that side. But
you know, Senora, Quetzalcoatl is to me only the symbol of
the best a man may be, in the next days. The universe
is a nest of dragons, with a perfectly unfathomable life-
mystery at the centre of it. If I call the mystery the
Morning Star, surely it doesn’t matter ! A man’s blood
can’t beat in the abstract. And man is a creature who wins
his own creation inch by inch from the nest of the cosmic
dragons. Or else he loses it little by little, and goes to
pieces. Now we are all losing it, in the ravishing and
ravished disintegration. We must pull ourselves together,
hard, both men and women, or we are all lost.—We must
pull ourselves together, hard.”

«« But are you a man who needs a woman in his life? ”

she said.

“ i am a man who yearns for the sensual fulfilment of
my soul, Senora,” he said. “ I am a man who has no
belief in abnegation of the blood desires. I am a man who
is always on the verge of taking wives and concubines to
live with me, so deep is my desire for that fulfilment.
Except that now I know that is useless—not momentarily
useless, but in the long run—my ravishing a woman with
hot desire. No matter how much she is in love with me
and desires me to ravish her. It is no good, and the very
inside of me knows it is no good. Wine, woman, and song-
all that—all that game is up. Our insides won’t really have
it any more. Yet it is hard to pull ourselves together.”

“ So that you really want a woman to be with you? ”

said Kate. _

“ Ah, Senora ! If I could trust myself; and trust her ! l

am no longer a young man, who can afford to make mistakes.
I am forty-two years old, and I am making my last and

AUTO DA FE

298

perhaps in truth, my first great effort as a man. I hope I

may perish before I make a big mistake. „

“ Why should you make a mistake? You needn t?

“I? It is very easy for me to make a mistake. Very
easy, on the one hand, for me to become arrogant and a
ravisher. And very easy, on the other hand for me to
deny myself, and make a sort of sacrifice of my life. Which
is being ravished. Easy to let myself, in a certain sense,
be ravished. I did it to a small degree even yesterday,
with the Bishop of Guadalajara. And it is bad. If I ha
to end my life in a mistake, Sehora, I had rather end it in
being a ravisher, than in being ravished. As a hot ravisher,

I can still slash and cut at the disease of the other thing,
the horrible pandering and the desire men have to be
ravished, the hateful, ignoble desire they have.

“ But why don’t you do as you say, stick by the inner¬
most soul that is in you, and meet a woman there, meet
her, as you say, where your two souls coincide in their
deepest desire? Not always that horrible unbalance that
you call ravishing.”

“ Why don’t I? But which woman can I meet in the
body, without that slow degradation of ravishing, or being
ravished, setting in? If I marry a Spanish woman or a
dark Mexican, she will give herself up to me to be ravished.
If I marry a woman of the Anglo-Saxon or any blonde
northern stock, she will*want to ravish me, with the will of all
the ancient white demons. Those that want to be ravished
are parasites on the soul, and one has revulsions. Those
that want to ravish a man are vampires. And between the
two, there is nothing.”

“ Surely there are some really good women? ”

“ Well, show me them. They are all potential Carlotas
or—or—yes, Caterinas. I am sure you ravished your
Joachim till he died. No doubt he wanted it; even more
than you wanted it. It is not just sex. It lies in the will.
Victims and victimisers. The upper classes, craving to be
victims to the lower classes; or else craving to make victims

of the lower classes. The politicians, craving to make one
people victims to another. The Church, with its evil will
for turning the people into humble, writhing things that shall
crave to be victimised, to be ravished.—I tell you, the earth
is a place of shame.**

204

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ But if you want to be different,” said Kate, “ surely
a few other people do—really.”

“ It may be,” he said, becoming calm. “ It may be.
I wish I kept myself together better. I must keep myself
together, keep myself within the middle place, where I am
still. My Morning Star. Now I am ashamed of having
talked like this to you, Senora Caterina.”

“ Why? ” she cried. And for the first time, the flush
of hurt and humiliation came into her face.

He saw it at once, and put his hand on hers for a moment.

“ No,” he said. “ I am not ashamed. I am relieved.”

She flushed deeply at his touch, and was silent. He rose
hastily, to leave, craving to be alone again with his own soul.

“ On Sunday,” he said, “ will you come into the plaza,
in the morning, when the drum sounds? Will you come? ”

“ W 7 hat for? ” she said.

“ Well ! Come, and you will see.”

He was gone in a flash.

There were many soldiers in the village. When she went
to the post-office, she saw the men in their cotton uniforms
lying about in the entrance to the military station. There
must have been fifty or more, little men, not the tall soldiers
in slouched hats. These were little, quick, compact men,
like Cipriano, and they talked in a strange Indian language,
very subdued. They were very rarely seen in the streets.
They kept out of sight.

But at night, everyone was requested to be indoors by
ten o’clock, and through the darkness Kate heard the patrols
of horse-soldiers riding round.

There was an air of excitement and mystery in the place.
The parish priest, a rather overbearing, fat man of fifty or
so, had preached a famous Saturday evening sermon against
Ramon and Quetzalcoatl, forbidding the heathen name to
be mentioned, threatening with all the penalties any
parishioner who read the Hymns, or even listened.

So, of course, he was attacked when he left the church,
and had to be rescued by soldiers who were in the doorway.
They marched him safely home. But his criada, the old
woman who served him, was told by more women than one
that the next time the padre opened his mouth against
Quetzalcoatl, he would have a few inches of machete in

his fat guts.

AUTO DA FE

295

So his reverence stayed at home, and a curate officiated.

Practically all the people who came over the lake in boats
on Saturdays, went to mass in Sayula church. The great
doors stood open all the day. Men as they passed to and fro
to the lake, took off their big bats, with a curious cringing
gesture, as they went by the gateway of the church. All day
long, scattered people were kneeling in the aisles or among
the benches, the men kneeling erect, their big hats down by
their knees, their curious tall-shaped Indian heads with the
thick black hair also erect; only the kneeling legs, close
together, humble. The women hooded themselves in their
dark rebozos and spread their elbows as they kneeled at a
bench, in a slack sort of voluptuousness.

On Saturday night, a great ruddy flickering of many
candle-points, away down the dark cavern of the church;
and a clustering of dark men’s heads, a shuffling of women.

a come and go of men arriving from the lake, of men depart¬
ing to the market. A hush, not exactly of worship, but of a
certain voluptuous admiration of the loftiness and glitter, a
sensual, almost victimised self-abandon to the god of death,
the Crucified streaked with blood, or to the pretty white
woman in a blue mantle, with her little doll’s face under her
crown, Mary, the doll of dolls, Nina of Ninas.

It was not worship. It was a sort of numbness and letting
the soul sink uncontrolled. And it was a luxury, after ail
the week of unwashed dullness in their squalid villages of
straw huts. But it irritated Kate.

The men got up and tiptoed away in their sandals, cross¬
ing themselves front and back, on the navel and on the back
of the head, with holy water. And their black eyes shone
with a loose, sensuous look. Instead of having gathered
themselves together and become graver, stronger, more col¬
lected and deep in their own integrity, they emerged only
^ oose a?^ sloppy and uncontrolled.

Oh, if there is one thing men need to learn, but the

,^* ans es P e cially, it is to collect each man his own
sou 1 together deep inside him, and to abide by it. The

m . st ead °f helping men to this, pushes them more
nl mt ° a so ^» emotional helplessness, with the im-

v Ratification of feeling themselves victims,

in«» victimised, but at the same time with the lurk-

6 omc consciousness that in the end a victim is stronger

296

THE PLUMED SERPENT

than the victimiser. In the end, the victims pull down their
victimiser, like a pack of hyaenas on an unwary lion. They
know it. Cursed are the falsely meek, for they are inherit¬
ing the earth.

On Sunday morning there was early mass at sunrise,
another mass at seven o’clock, another at nine, another at
eleven. Then there was a little band of violins and ’cellos,
playing old-fashioned dance music; there was, especially
early in the morning, a solid mass of peons and women,
kneeling on the floor; and a flapping of dusky candles, a
smell of the exhaust air of candles, a heavy, rolling fume of
incense, and the heavy choir of men’s voices, solid, powerful,
impressive, from the gallery.

And the people went away in sensuous looseness, which
soon turned, in the market, to hate, the old, unfathomable
hate which lies at the bottom of the Indian heart, and which
always rises black and turbid when they have swayed awhile
in sensuous gratification.

The church inside was a dead interior, like all Mexican
churches, even the gorgeous Puebla cathedral. The in¬
terior of almost any Mexican church gives the impression
of cynical barrenness, cynical meaninglessness, an empty,
cynical, mocking shell. The Italian churches are built much
in the same style, and yet in them lingers a shadow and
stillness of old, mysterious holiness. The hush.

But not in Mexico. The churches outside are impressive.
Inside, and it is curious to define it, they are blatant; void
of sound and yet with no hush, simple, and yet completely
vulgar, barren, sterile. More barren than a bank or a
school-room or an empty concert-hall, less mysterious than
any of these. You get a sense of plaster, of mortar, of
whitewash, of smeared blue-wash or grey-wash; and of gilt
laid on and ready to peel off. Even in the most gorgeous
churches, the gilt is hatefully gilt, never golden. Nothing
is soft nor mellow.

So the interior of Sayula church; and Kate had often
been in. The white exterior was charming, and so valuable
in the landscape, with the twin white pagoda-towers peering
out of the green willow trees. But inside, it seemed nothing
but whitewash, stencilled over with grey scroll-work decora¬
tions. The windows were high, and many, letting in the
light as into a schoolroom. Jesus, streaked with blood, was

AUTO DA FE

297

in one of the transepts, and the Virgin, a doll in faded satin,
stood startled inside a glass case. There were rag flowers
and paper flowers, coarse lace and silver that looked like
tin.

Nevertheless, it was quite clean, and very much fre¬
quented.

The Month of Mary had gone by, the blue and white
paper ribbons were all taken down, the palm trees in pots
were all removed from the aisle, the little girls in white
dresses and little crowns of flowers no longer came with
posies in their hand, at evening. Curious, the old gentle
ceremonials of Europe, how trashy they seem in Mexico,
just a cheap sort of charade.

The day of Corpus Christi came, with high mass and the
church full to the doors with kneeling peons, from dawn till
noon. Then a feeble little procession of children within the
church, because the law forbids religious processions outside.
But all, somehow, for nothing. Just so that the people could
call it a fiesta, and so have an excuse to be more slack,
more sloshy and uncontrolled than ever. The one Mexican
desire; to let themselves go in sloppy inertia.

And this was the all-in-all of the religion. Instead of doing

as it should, collecting the soul into its own strength and

in egrity, the religious day left it all the more decomposed
and degenerate.

However, the weeks passed, the crowd in the church

seemed the same as ever. But the crowd in the church

one hour was the crowd of Quetzalcoatl the next hour. Just
a sensation.

rw! i* v* J“° re so . cialistic Readers mingled a little anti-
bitterness in then- reading. And all the peons

shfTn^- Say i! T S E1 . Sefior a g™igo, and the Santisima, was
she nothing but a gringita ?

This provoked retaliation on the part of the priests first

r c P at a o f ThT, ti0nS ’ the “ a ,V laSt loud dJSES and
threat of that sermon. Which meant war.

Everybody waited for Saturday. Saturday came and
dark Md h cWd ,ne s Sh u Ut ‘ SatUrday ni 8 ht > ‘he church was

WA&LSr**' the chuich was sUent “ d

host° mC T)!?,? !| k n const ornation spread through the market
host. . They had nowhere to go !-But among the con-

298

THE PLUMED SERPENT

sternation was a piqued curiosity. Perhaps something ex¬
citing was going to happen.

Things had happened before. In the revolutions, many
of the churches in Mexico have been used for stables and for
barracks. And churches are turned into schools, and concert
halls, and cinematograph theatres. The convents and the
monasteries are most of them barracks for the rag-tag-and-
bobtail soldiers. The world changes, is bound to change.

The second Saturday of the closed church was, as it
happened, a big market. Much fruit and stuff had come up
the lake, from the south from far distances, even from
Colima. There were men with lacquer wooden bowls, and
women with glazed pottery. And as usual, men crouching
in guard over twenty centavos worth of nauseous tropical
plums, or chiles, or mangoes, in tiny pyramids along the
roadway.

A crowded market, with the much and the little of the
Indians. And the church doors shut and locked, the church
bells silent, even the clock stopped. True, the clock was
always stopping. But not with such a final arrest.

No mass, no confession, no little orgy of incense and slack
emotion 1 The low rumble of murmuring tones, the quick,
apprehensive glances around. Vendors by the causeway
squatted tight, as if to make themselves dense and small,
squatting down on their haunches with their knees up to
their shoulders, like the Aztec idols. And soldiers in twos
and threes sprinkled everywhere. And Senoras and
Senoritas, in their black gauze scarves or mantillas, tripping
to the church for mass and shrilling round the gateway of
the church, all a bubble and a froth of chatter; though they
had known quite well the church was shut.

But it was Sunday morning, and something was due to
happen.

At about half-past ten, a boat appeared, and men in snow-
white clothes got out, one carrying a drum. They marched
quickly through the people, under the old trees on the sand,
across to the church. They passed through the broken
iron gates into the stone courtyard in front of the church.

At the church doors, which were still shut, they took off
their blouses, and stood in a ring, with dark naked shoulders
and the blue-and-black sashes of Quetzalcoatl round their

waists.

AUTO DA FE

299

The drum began to beat, with a powerful, pounding note,
as the men stood bare-headed and bare-breasted in a circle
outside the church doors; a strange ring of lustrous, bluey-
black heads and dark shoulders, above the snowy white
pantaloons. Monotonously the drum beat, on and on. Then
the little clay flute with the husky sound wheezed a clear
melody.

The whole market pressed densely towards the gateways
of the church. But there, soldiers stood guard. And on
the inside of the stone yard in front of the church, soldiers
quietly guarded the low walls, letting nobody mount. So
that outside, under the old willow and pepper trees, in the
hot morning sun, the dense crowd stood gazing at the church
doors. They were mostly men in big hats; but some towns¬
men were there, and some women, and Kate with a parasol
lined with dark blue. A close, silent, tense throng under
the spangled shade, pressing round the trunks of the palm
trees, climbing on the roots of the pepper trees. And behind
were the camions and the motor-cars drawn up.

The drum shuddered and went still, and the earthen
flute was silent. The lake could be heard lapping, and a
clink of glasses and a sound of chauffeurs* voices at the little
cantina-booth. For the rest, the silent breathing of the
crowd.—Soldiers were quickly distributing a few leaflets
among the crowd. A strong, far-carrying male voice began
to sing to the softened thud of the drum.

Jesus* Farewell.

Farewell, Farewell, Despedida l
The last of my days is gone.

To-morrow Jesus and Holy Mary
Will be bone.

It is a long, long way

From Mexico to the Pool of Heaven.

Look back the last time, Mary Mother.

Let us call the eleven.

James, and John, and Mark,

Felipe and San Cristobal,

All my saints, and Anna, Teresa,

Guadalupe whose face is ova . 1

800

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Come then, now, it is finished for all of us.

Let us all be gone.

Follow me now up the ladders of sparks.
Every one.

Joaquin, Francis, and Anthony
And many-named Maria,

Purisima, Refugio, and Soledad
Follow here.

Ho ! all my saints and my Virgins
Troop out of your shrines,

After your master, the Crucified;

Bring all your signs.

Run up the flames, and with feet on the sparks

Troop into the sky.

Once more following the Master,

Back again now, on high.

Farewell, let all be forgotten
In Mexico.

To the pool of peace and forgetting in heaven
We go.

While this was singing, another boat had arrived, and
soldiers made way through the crowd for Ramon, in his
white sarape with the blue edges and scarlet fringe, and a
young priest of the church in a black cassock, and six men
in dark sarapes with the blue borders of Quetzalcoatl. This
strange procession marched through the crowd and through
the gateways of the yard.

As they approached, the ring of men round the drum
opened, and spread into a crescent. Ram6n stood tall
behind the drum, the six men in dark sarapes divided and
went to the wings of the crescent, the young, slim priest
in a black cassock stood alone, in front of the crescent,

facing the crowd. ... „

He lifted his hand; Ramon took.off his hat; all the men

in the crowd took off their hats.

The priest turned, met Ram6n at the centre of the

crescent, and, across the drum, handed him the key of the

church. Then the priest waited.

AUTO DA FE

801

Ram6n unlocked the church doors and flung them open.
The men in front of the crowd kneeled down suddenly, seeing
the church dark like a cavern, but a trembling blaze of
many candles, away, seemingly far down the mysterious
darkness, shuddering with dark, rippling flame, like the
Presence of the burning bush.

The crowd swayed and rustled, and subsided, kneeling.
Only here and there a labourer, a chauffeur or a railway
man stood erect.

The priest raised his hand a little higher, re-tuming
towards the people.

“ My children,” he said; and as he spoke the lake seemed
to rustle; “ God the Almighty has called home His Son, and
the Holy Mother of the Son. Their days are over in Mexico.
They go back to the Father.

“ Jesus, the Son of God, bids you farewell.

Mary, the Mother of God, bids you farewell.

For the last time they bless you, as they leave you.

Answer Adios l

Say Adios l my children.”

The men in the circle said a deep Adios! And from the
soldiers, and from the kneeling crowd, a ragged, muttered,
strange repeating of Adios! again and again, like a sort of
storm.

Suddenly, in a blast, down the darkness of the church
into which the kneeling people were staring, the burning
bush of candles was gone, there was only darkness. Across
the sunshine, lit here and there by a frail light of a taper,
was a cave of darkness.

Men in the crowd exclaimed and groaned.

Then the drum softly touched, and two men in the
crescent began to sing, in magnificent, terrible voices, the
Farewell Hymn again. They were men whom Ram6n, or
Jus followers, had found in low drinking dens in Mexico
City, men with trained and amazing voices, the powerful
Mexican tenor that seemed to tear the earth open. Men
whom the “ times ” have reduced to singing in low city
dives. And now they sang with all the terrible desperation
that was in them, the hopeless, demonish recklessness.

302

THE PLUMED SERPENT

When they finished, the priest again lifted his hand, and
gave the benediction; adding in a quiet voice :

“ And now, with all the saints, let Me go, saith Jesus.
For I go back to my Father which is in heaven, and I lead
my Mother in my right hand, home to peace.”

He turned and went into the church. Ram6n followed.
Then slowly, all the men of the crescent. Overhead the
church bell rang a little while, on the deathly silence. It
ceased.

And in a moment, from the depths of the church sounded
a drum, with a remote, fearsome thud, and a slow monotony.

The priest, in his white vestments with rich lace, appeared
in the doorway of the church, bearing a tall crucifix. He
hesitated, then came into the sun. The kneeling people
clasped their hands.

Candles in the dark church were clustering towards the
door, lonely flames. Don Ramon came out of the dark,
naked to the waist, his sarape over one shoulder, bearing
the front pole of the great bier whereon lies, within a glass
case, the lifelike, terrible dead Christ of Holy Week. A tall,
dark man, naked to the waist, held the other end of the
pole on his shoulder. The crowd moaned and crossed them¬
selves. The lifelike Dead Christ seemed really dead, as he
passed the gates. As He entered the crowd, kneeling men
and women lifted sightless faces and flung their arms wide
apart, and so remained, arms rigid and outflung, in an un¬
speakable ecstasy of fear, supplication, acknowledgement
of death.

After the bier of the Dead Christ, a slow procession of
men naked to the waist, carrying litter after litter. First
the terrible scourged Christ, with naked body striped like a
tiger with blood. Then the image of the Saviour of the
Sacred Heart, the well-known figure from the side altar,
with long hair and outstretched hands. Then the image
of Jesus of Nazareth, with a crown of Thorns.

Then the Virgin with the blue mantle and lace, and the
golden crown. The women began to moan as she emerged
rather trashily into the blazing sunlight. Behind her, in the
church, the candles were one by one going out.

Then came brown Saint Anthony of Padua, with a child
in his arms. Then Saint Francis, looking strangely at a
cross in his hand. Then Saint Anna. And last. Saint

AUTO DA FE

808

Joaquin. And as he emerged, the last candles in the dark
church went out, there were only open doors upon a dark¬
ness.

The images on the shoulders of the brown-skinned men
rode rather childishly out through the blazing sun, into the
shadow of trees. The drum followed last, slowly thudding.
On the glass case of the big Dead Christ the sun flashed
with startling flashes, as the powerful men carrying it turned
towards the water. The crowd murmured and swayed on its
knees. Women cried: Purisima! Purisima! Don't leave
us! and some men ejaculated in strangled anguish, over and
over again : Senor! SenorI Senor!

But the strange procession made its way slowly under
the trees, to the coarse sands, and descended again into the
great light towards the lake. There was a little breeze under
a blaze of sun. Folded sarapes on naked, soft shoulders
swung unevenly, the images rocked and tottered a little.
But onwards to the edge of the water went the tall crucifix,
then the flashing glass box. And after, came Jesus in a red
silk robe, fluttering, then a wooden Jesus all paint and
streaks, then Jesus in white with a purple mantle that blew
like a kerchief, Mary in lace that fluttered upon stiff white
and blue satin. But the saints were only painted; painted
wood.

The slim, lace-smocked priest staggered down the sand

under the heavy crucifix, which had a white Christ Crucified

stretched aloft, facing the lake. By the little wall was a

large black canoa , sailing boat, with a broad plank gangway

up to her stern. Two bare-legged, white-clad men walked

by the slim priest, whose white sleeves blew like flags as he

slowly climbed the gangway to the ship. Men helped him

on board, and he walked away to the prow, where at length

he stood the big crucifix, with the Christ still facing out¬
wards.

The ship was open, without deck or hatches, but with
nxed tables for the images. Slowly Ram6n ascended and
descended into the boat, the great glass case was laid down
on its rest, the two men could wipe their wet brows and their
not, black hair. Ram6n put on his blanket and his hat,
against the sun. The boat heaved very slightly. The wind

Minded™ thC W6St ' The lakC WaS Pale and unreal > » UI >-

304

THE PLUMED SERPENT

One after another the images rose over the stern of the
boat, against the sky, then descended into the vessel, to
be set down on their rests, where they rose above the black
6ides of the canoa , in view of the throng on the shore.

It was a strange and tawdry collection of images. And
yet, each image had a certain pathos of its own, and a
certain touch of horror, as they were grouped together for
their last ride, upon the trestle-supports within the vessel.
By each image stood the bearers, in hats and sarapes, keep¬
ing a steady hand on the poles.

There was a little line of soldiers on the shore, and three
motor-boats with soldiers waited by the big canoa. The
shore was covered with a mass of people. Many row-boats
came rowing inquisitively round, like fishes. But none
came too near.

Bare-legged sailors began to pole the ship from the shore.
They leaned heavily on the poles, and walked along the rims
of the vessel. Slowly she began to move upon the waters,
in the shallows. Slowly, she was leaving the shore, and the
throng.

Two other sailors swiftly began to hoist the huge, square
white sail. Quickly, yet heavily it rose in the air, and took
the wind. It had the great sign of Quetzalcoatl, the circling
blue snake and the blue eagle upon a yellow field, at the
centre, like a great eye.

The wind came from the west, but the boat was steering
south-east, for the little Island of the Scorpions, which rose
like a small dim hummock from the haze of the lake. So
the sail reached out, and the great eye seemed to be glanc¬
ing back, at the village with the green willows and the
empty white church, the throng on the shore.

Motor-boats circled the huge, slow canoe, small boats
like insects followed and ranged round at a distance, never
coming too close. The running water clucked and spoke,
the men by the images steadied the poles with one hand,
their hats with the other, the great eye on the sail ever
looked back at the land, the sweep of the white canvas
sweeping low above the glass case of death, the Christ caked
with gore, the images in their fluttering mantles.

On the shore, the people wandered away, or sat on the
sands waiting and watching in a sort of dumb patience that
was half indifference. The canoe grew smaller, more in-

AUTO DA FE

805

conspicuous, lapsing into the light, the little boats circled
around it like mere dots. The lake tired the eyes with its
light.

Away under the trees, In a half silenca, a half vacancy,
a woman bought a dark water-melon, smashed it open on
a stone, and gave the big pinky fragments to her children.
In silence, men sprinkled salt on the thick slice of cucumber
sold by the woman under the tree. In silence they wandered
into the church, past the soldiers on guard at the door.

The church was absolutely dark, save for the light that
entered the doorway, and absolutely bare; walls, floor,
altar, transepts, all stark bare and empty. The people
wandered away again, in silence.

It was noon, and a hot day. The canoa slowly ranged
to the small hummock of the island amid the waters, where
lived one family of Indians—fishers, with a few goats and
one dry little place where they grew a few beans and heads
of maize. For the rest, the island was all dry rock and
thorny bushes, and scorpions.

The vessel was poled round to the one rocky bay. Slowly
she drew near the island. The motor-boats and the little
boats hurried ahead. Already brown, naked men were
bathing among the rocks.

The great sail sank, the canoa edged up to the rocky
shore, men sprang from her into the water, the images were
lowered and slowly carried on to the rocks. There they
waited for the bearers.

Slowly the procession went again up the bank of the
dishevelled island, past the couple of huts, where a red cock
was crowing among the litter, and over to rocks, beyond
the bushes, on the far side.

The side facing Sayula was all rock, naked and painful to
tread on. In a rocky hollow at the waters* edge, tall stones
had been put up on end, with iron bars across the top, like
a grill. Underneath, a pile of faggots ready; and at the
side, a pile of faggots.

The images, the glass box of the great Dead Christ, were
laid on the iron bars of the grill, in a pathetic cluster all
together. The crucifix was leaned against them. It was
noon » t * le heat and the light were fierce and erect. But
already down the lake clouds were pushing up fantastically.

oeyond the water, beyond the glare, the village looked

806 THE PLUMED SERPENT

like a mirage, with its trees and villages and white church
towers.

Men who had come in boats crowded on the rocks of the
little amphitheatre. In silence, Ram6n kindled shreds of
cane and ocote, with a burning glass. Little hasty flames
like young snakes arose in the solid sunlight, with vapor
of smoke. He set fire to the carefully-arranged pyramid of
faggots beneath the grill-table of the images.

There was a crackling, and a puffing of whitish smoke, the
sweet scent of ocote, and orange-red tongues of half-
substantial flame were leaping up in the hot white air. Hot
breaths blew suddenly, sudden flames gushed up, and the
ocote, full of sweet resin, began to roar. The glass of the
great box emitted strange, painful yelps as it splintered and
fell tinkling. Between the iron bars, brownish flames pushed
up among the images, which at once went black. The little
vestments of silk and satin withered in a moment to black¬
ness, the caked wounds of paint bubbled black.

The young priest took off his linen vestment, his stole and
his chasuble, and with flushed face flung them in the flame.
Then he stripped off his black cassock, and emerged in the
white cotton of the men of Quetzalcoatl, his white drawers
rolled up to the knee. He threw his cassock in the fire.
Someone handed him a big hat, and a white sarape with
blue ends.

There was a smell of burning paint, and wool, and ocote.
The fire rushed in a dusky mass upon the blackened, flicker¬
ing images, till nothing was to be seen but a confused bush
of smoke and brown-red flames, puthering, reeking, roaring.
The flaming crucifix slipped aside, and fell. A man seized
it and pushed it into the fire, under the images. Men in a
sort of ecstasy threw on more of the heavy, resinous wood,
that almost exploded into flame. Rocks cracked and ex¬
ploded like guns. Everybody drew back from that roaring
tree of flame, which rose ever higher and higher, its dark
smoke and its sparks unfolding into heaven.

One of the supporting stones burst with a bang, bars of
iron and blazing stumps of images tumbled in a confused
roar. The glass case had disappeared, but ribbons of iron
waved, then curled over red, into the torrent "f the sudden
fire. Strange rods of iron appeared out of nowhere, pro¬
truding from solid red coals.

AUTO DA FE

807

And soon, all that was left was a fierce glow of red coals
of wood, with a medley of half-fused iron.

Ramon stood aside and watched in silence, His dark brow

quite expressionless.

Then, when only the last bluish flames flickered out of a
tumble of red fire, from the eminence above, rockets began
to shoot into the air with a swish, exploding high in the
sightless hot blue, with a glimmer of bluish showers, and
of gold.

The people from the shore had seen the tree of smoke with
its trunk of flame. Now they heard the heavy firing of the
rockets, they looked again, exclaiming, half in dismay, half
in the joyful lust of destruction :

“ Senor 1 Senor 1 La Purisima ! La Santisima ! ”

The flame and the smoke and the rockets melted as if by
miracle, into nothingness, leaving the hot air unblemished.
The coals of fire were shovelled and dropped down a steeD
hole.

As the canoa sailed back, the side of the lake, through
filmy air, looked brownish and changeless. A cloud was
rising in the south-west, from behind the dry, silent moun¬
tains, like a vast white tail, like the vast white fleecy tail
of some squirrel, that had just dived out of sight behind
the mountains. This wild white tail fleeced up and up, to
the zenith, straight at the sun. And as the canoa spread her
sail to tack back, already a delicate film of shadow was over
the chalk-white lake.

Only on the low end of the isle of Scorpions, hot air still
quivered.

Ram6n returned in one of the motor-boats. Slowly the
sky was clouding for the thunder and the rain. The canoa t
unable to make her way across, was sailing for Tuliapan.
The little boats hurried in silence.

They landed before the wind rose. Ram6n went and
locked the doors of the church.

The crowd scattered in the wind, rebozos waving wildly,
leaves torn, dust racing. Sayula was empty of God, and. at
heart, they were glad.

CHAP : XIX. THE ATTACK ON JAMILTEPEC.

Suddenly, nearly all the soldiers disappeared from the
village, there was a “ rebellion ” in Colima. A train had
been held up, people killed. And somebody, Generals Fulano
and Tulano, had “ pronounced ” against the government.

Stir in the air, everybody enjoying those periodical shivers
of fear 1 But for these shivers, everything much the same
as usual. The church remained shut up, and dumb. The
clock didn’t go. Time suddenly fell off, the days walked
naked and timeless, in the old, uncounted manner of the past.
The strange, old, uncounted, unregistered, unreckoning days
of the ancient heathen world.

Kate felt a bit like a mermaid trying to swim in a wrong
element. She was swept away in some silent tide, to the
old, antediluvian silence, where things moved without con¬
tact. She moved and existed without contact. Even the
striking of the hours had ceased. As a drowning person sees
nothing but the waters, so Kate saw nothing but the face
of the timeless waters.

So, of course, she clutched at her straw. She couldn’t
bear it. She ordered an old, ricketty Ford car, to take
her bumping out to Jamiltepec, over the ruinous roads in the
afternoon.

The country had gone strange and void, as it does when
these “ rebellions ” start. As if the life-spirit were sucked
away, and only some empty, anti-life void, remained in the
wicked hollow countryside. Though it was not far to
Jamiltepec, once outside the village, the chauffeur and his
little attendant lad began to get frightened, and to go frog-
like with fear.

There is something truly mysterious about the Mexican
quality of fear. As if man and woman collapsed and lay
wriggling on the ground like broken reptiles, unable to rise.
Kate used all her will, against this cringing nonsense.

They arrived without ado at Jamiltepec. The place
seemed quiet, but normal. An oxen wagon stood empty
in the courtyard. There were no soldiers on guard. They
had all been withdrawn, against the rebellion. But several

808

809

THE ATTACK ON JAMXLTEPEC

peons were moving round, in a desultory fashion. The day
was a fiesta, when not much work was doing. In the
houses of the peons, the women were patting tortillas, and
preparing hot chile sauce, grinding away on the metates. A
fiesta! Only the windmill that pumped up water from the
lake was spinning quickly, with a little noise.

Kate drove into the yard in silence, and two mozos with
guns and belts of cartridges came to talk in low tones to the
chauffeur.

“ Is Dona Carlota here?’’ asked Kate.

M No Senora. The patrona is not here.”

“ Don Ram6n ?”

“ Si Senora ! Est&.”

Even as she hesitated, rather nervous, Ram6n came out
of the inner doorway of the courtyard, in his dazzling white
clothes.

“ I came to see you,” said Kate. “ I don’t know if you’d
rather I hadn’t. But I can go back in the motor-car.”

“ No,” he said. “ I am glad. I was feeling deserted,
I don’t know why. Let us go upstairs.”

“ Patrbn I” said the chauffeur, in a low voice. “ Must I
stay?”

Ram6n said a few words to him. The chauffeur was uneasy,
and didn’t want to stay. He said he had to be back in
Sayula at such and such a time. Excuses, anyhow. But
it was evident he wanted to get away.

“ Then best let him go,” said Ram6n to Kate. “ You
do not mind going home in the boat?”

“ I don’t want to give you trouble.”

“It is least trouble to let this fellow go, and you can
leave by boat just whenever you wish to. So we shall all
be more free.”

Kate paid the chauffeur, and the Ford started rattling.
After rattling a while, it moved in a curve round the court¬
yard, and lurched through the zaguan, disappearing as fast
as possible.

Ram6n spoke to his two mozos with the guns. They went
to the outer doorway, obediently.

“ Why do you have to have armed men ?” she said.

** they’re afraid of bandits,” he said. “ Whenever
there’s a rebellion anywhere, everybody is afraid of bandits.
So of course that calls bandits into life.”

310

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ But where do they come from?” said Kate, as they
passed into the inner doorways.

“ From the villages,” he said, closing the heavy door of
that entrance behind him, and putting the heavy iron bars
across, from wall to wall.

The inner archway was now a little prison, for the strong
iron gates at the lake end of the passage were shut fast. She
looked through, at the little round pond. It had some blue
water-lilies on it. Beyond, the pallid lake seemed almost
like a ghost, in the glare of the sun.

A servant was sent to the kitchen quarters, Ram6n and
Kate climbed the stone stairs to the upper terrace. How
lonely, stonily lonesome and forlorn the hacienda could feel !
The very stone walls could give off emptiness, loneliness,
negation.

“But which villages do the bandits come from?” she
insisted.

“ Any of them. Mostly, they say, from San Pablo or
from Ahuajijic.”

“ Quite near 1” she cried.

“ Or from Sayula,” he added. “ Any of the ordinary
men in big hats you see around the plaza, may possibly be
bandits, when banditry pays, as a profession, and isn’t
punished with any particular severity.”

“ It is hard to believe 1” she said.

“ It is so obvious !” he said, dropping into one of the
rocking-chairs opposite her, and smiling across the onyx
table.

“ I suppose it is !” she said.

He clapped his hands, and his mozo Martin came up.
Ramon ordered something, in a low, subdued tone. The
man replied in an even lower, more subdued tone. Then
the master and man nodded at one another, and the man
departed, his huaraches swishing a little on the terrace.

Ramon had fallen into the low, crushed sort of voice so
common in the country, as if everyone were afraid to speak
aloud, so they murmured guardedly. This was unusual,
and Kate noticed it in him with displeasure. She sat look¬
ing past the thick mango-trees, whose fruit was changing
colour like something gradually growing hot, to the ruffled,
pale-brown lake. The mountains of the opposite shore
were very dark. Above them lay a heavy, but distant

811

THE ATTACK ON JAMILTEPEC

black cloud, out of which lightning flapped suddenly and
uneasily.

“ Where is Don Cipriano?” she asked.

“ Don Cipriano is very much General Viedma at the
moment,’* he replied. “ Chasing rebels in the State of
Colima.”

“ Will they be very hard to chase?”

“ Probably not. Anyhow Cipriano will enjoy chasing
them. He is Zapotec, and most of his men are Zapotecans,
from the hills. They love chasing men who aren’t.”

44 I wondered why he wasn’t there on Sunday when you
carried away the images,” she said. “ I think it was an
awfully brave thing to do.”

44 Do you?” he laughed. 44 It wasn’t. It’s never half
so brave, to carry something off, and destroy it, as to set
a new pulse beating.”

“ But you have to destroy those old things, first.”

“ Those frowsty images—why, yes. But it’s no good until
you’ve got something else moving, from the inside.”

” And have you ?”

“ I think I have. Don’t you?”

“ Yes,” she said, a little doubtful.

“ I think I have,” he said. 44 I feel there’s a new thing
moving inside me.” He was laughing at her, for her hesita¬
tion. 41 Why don’t you come and join us?” he added.

“ How ?” she said. 44 By being married off to Don
Cipriano ?”

“ Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Not necessarily by
being married to anybody.”

“ What are you going to do next?” she said.

“I? I am going to re-open the church, for Quetzalcoatl
to come in. But I don’t like lonely gods. There should be
several of them, I think, for them to be happy together.”

“ Does one need gods?” she said.

** Why yes. One needs manifestations, it seems to me.”

Kate sat in unwilling silence.

“ One needs goddesses too. That is also a dilemma,” he
added, with a laugh.

How I would hate ,” said Kate, 44 to have to be a
goddess for people.”

44 For the monkeys ?” he said, smiling.

Yes l Of course.”

312

THE PLUMED SERPENT

At that moment, he sat erect, listening. There had been
a shot, which Kate had heard, but which she had hardly
noticed; to her ears, it might have been a motor-car back¬
firing, or even a motor-boat.

Suddenly, a sharp little volley of shots.

Ramon rose swiftly, swift as a great cat, and slammed to
the iron door at the top of the stair-way, shooting the bars.

“ Won’t you go into that room ?” he said to her, pointing
to a dark doorway. “ You will be all right there. Just
stay a few minutes till I come back.”

As he spoke, there came a shriek from the courtyard at the
back, and a man’s death-voice yelled Patron !

Ramdn’s eyes dilated with terrible anger, the anger of
death. His face went pale and strange, as he looked at her
without seeing her, the black flame filling his eyes. He had
drawn a long-barreled steel revolver from his hip.

Still without seeing her, he strode rapidly, soft and catlike
along the terrace, and leaped up the end staircase on to the
roof. The soft, eternal passion of anger in his limbs.

Kate stood in the doorway of the room, transfixed. The
light of day seemed to have darkened before her face.

“ Hol& 1 You there !” she heard his voice from the roof,
in such anger it was almost a laugh, from far away.

For answer, a confused noise from the courtyard, and
several shots. The slow, steady answer of shots !

She started as a rushing hiss broke on the air. In terror
she waited. Then she saw it was a rocket bursting with
a sound like a gun, high over the lake, and emitting a shower
of red balls of light. A signal from Ramon 1

Unable to go into the dark room, Kate waited as if smitten
to death. Then something stirred deep in her, she flew along
the terrace and up the steps to the roof. She realised that
she didn’t mind dying so long as she died with that man.
Not alone.

The roof was glaring with sunshine. It was flat, but its
different levels were uneven. She ran straight out into the
light, towards the parapet wall, and had nearly come in
sight of the gateway of the courtyard below, when some¬
thing gave a slight smack, and bits of plaster flew in her
face and her hair. She turned and fled back like a bee to
the stairway.

The stairs came up in a corner, where there was a little

THE ATTACK ON JAMILTEPEC

813

sort of stone turret, square, with stone seats. She sank
on one of these seats, looking down in terror at the turn
of the stairs. It was a narrow little stone stairway, between
the solid stone walls.

She was almost paralysed with shock and with fear. Yet
something within her was calm. Leaning and looking out
across calm sunshine of the level roof, she could not believe

in death.

She saw the white figure and the dark head of Ram6n
within one of the small square turrets across the roof. The
little tower was open, and hardly higher than his head. He
was standing in a corner, looking sideways down a loop-hole,
perfectly motionless. Snap ! went his revolver, deliberately.
There was a muffled cry below, and a sudden volley of shots.

Ram6n stood away from the loop-hole and took off his
white blouse, so that it should not betray him. Above his
sash was a belt of cartridges. In the shadow of the turret,
his body looked curiously dark, rising from the white of his

trousers. Again he took his stand quietly at the side of
the long, narrow, slanting aperture. He lifted his revolver
carefully, and the shots, one, two, three, slow and deliberate,
startled her nerves. And again there was a volley of shots
from below, and bits of stone and plaster smoking against
the sky. Then again, silence, long silence. Kate pressed
her hands against her body, as she sat.

The clouds had shifted, the sun shone yellowish. In the
heavier light, the mountains beyond the parapet showed a
fleece of young green, smoky and beautiful.

All was silent. Ram6n in the shadow did not move, pres¬
sing himself against the wall, and looking down. He com¬
manded, she knew, the big inner doors.

Suddenly, however, he shifted. With his revolver in his
hand he stooped and ran, like some terrible cat, the sun
gleammg on his naked back as he crouched under the
shelter of the thick parapet wall, running along the roof to
the corresponding front turret.

This turret was roofless, and it was nearer to Kate, as she

tK t pel l" b ? u ? d ’ “ a sort °* eternity, on the stone seat at
the head of the stairs, watching Ram6n. He pressed him-

against the wall, and lifted his revolver to the slit. And

deSw 11 ?’ tW °o thre6 ’ four > five > the shots exploded
deliberately. Some voice below yelled Ay-ee \ Ay-ee !

314

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Ay-ee ! in yelps of animal pain. A voice was heard shout¬
ing command. Ramon kneeled on one knee, re-loading his
revolver. Then he struck a match, and again Kate almost
started out of her skin, as a rocket rushed ferociously up
into the sky, exploded like a gun, and let fall the balls of red
flame that lingered as if loth to die away, in the high, remote
air.

She sighed, wondering what it all was. It was death, she
knew. But so strange, so vacant. Just these noises of
shots ! And she could see nothing outside. She wanted to
see what was in the courtyard.

Ram6n was at his post, pressing himself close to the wall,
looking down, with bent head, motionless. There were
shots, and a spatter of lead from below. But he did not
move. She could not see his face, only part of his back;
the proud, heavy, creamy-brown shoulders, the black head
bent a little forward, in concentration, the cartridge-belt
dropping above his loins, over the white, floppy linen of the
trousers. Still and soft in watchful concentration, almost
like silence itself. Then with soft, diabolic swiftness in his
movements, he changed his position, and took aim.

He was utterly unaware of her; even of her existence.
Which was as it should be, no doubt. She sat motionless,
waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting, in that yellowish sun¬
light of eternity, with a certain changeless suspense of still¬
ness inside her. Someone would come from the village.
There would be an end. There would be an end.

At the same time, she started every time he fired, and
looked at him. And she heard his voice saying : “ One

needs manifestations, it seems to me.*’ Ah, how she hated
the noise of shots.

Suddenly she gave a piercing shriek, and in one leap was
out of her retreat. She had seen a black head turning the
stairs.

Before she knew it, Ram6n jumped past her like a great
cat, and two men clashed in mid-air, as the unseen fellow
leaped up from the stairs. Two men in a crash went down
on the floor, a revolver went off, terrible limbs were writhing.

Ramon’s revolver was on the floor. But again there was
a shot from the tangled men, and a redness of blood suddenly
appearing out of nowhere, on the white cotton clothing, as
the two men twisted and fought on the floor.

THE ATTACK ON JAMILTEPEC

815

They were both big men. Struggling on the ground, they
looked huge. Ramon had the bandit’s revolver-hand by
the wrist. The bandit, with a ghastly black face with
rolling eyes and sparse moustache, had got Ramon’s naked
arm in his white teeth, and was hanging on, showing his
red gums, while with his free hand he was feeling for his
knife.

Kate could not believe that the black, ghastly face with
the sightless eyes and biting mouth was conscious. Ram6u
had him clasped round the body. The bandit’s revolver
fell, and the fellow’s loose black hand scrabbled on the
concrete, feeling for it. Blood was flowing over his teeth.
Yet some blind super-consciousness seemed to possess him,
as if he were a devil, not a man.

His hand nearly touched Ramon’s revolver. In horror
Kate ran and snatched the weapon from the warm concrete,
running away as the bandit gave a heave, a great sudden
heave of his body, under the body of Ram6n. Kate raised
the revolver. She hated that horrible devil under Ram6n
as she had never hated in her life. Yet she dared not fire.

Ramon shouted something, glancing at her. She could
not understand. But she ran round, to be able to shoot the
man under Ramon. Even as she ran, the bandit twisted
with a great lunge of his body, heaved Ram6n up, and with
his short free hand got Ramon’s own knife from the belt at
the groin, and stabbed.

Kate gave a cry! Oh, how she wanted to shoot! She
saw the knife strike sideways, slanting in a short jab into
Ramdn’s back. At the same moment there was a stumble
on the stairs, and another black-headed man was leaping on
to the roof from the turret.

She stiffened her wrist and fired without looking, in a
sudden second of pure control. The black head came
crashing at her. She recoiled in horror, lifted the revolver
and fired again, and missed. But even as it passed her,
she saw red blood among the black hairs of that head. It
crashed down, the buttocks of the body heaving up, the
whole thing twitching and jerking along, the face seeming
to grin in a mortal grin.

Glancing from horror to horror, she saw Ram6n, his face
still as death, blood running down his arm and his back,
holding down the head of the bandit by the hair and stabbing

316

THE PLUMED SERPENT

him with short stabs in the throat, one, two, while blood
shot out like a red projectile; there was a strange sound like
a soda-syphon, a ghastly bubbling, one final terrible con¬
vulsion from the loins of the stricken man, throwing Ramon
off, and Ram6n lay twisted, still clutching the man’s hair in
one hand, the bloody knife in the other, and gazing into the
livid, distorted face, in which ferocity seemed to have gone
frozen, with a steady, intent, inhuman gaze.

Then, without letting go his victim’s hair, he looked up,
cautiously. To see Kate’s man, with black hair wet with
blood, and blood running down into his glazed, awful eyes,
slowly rising to his knees. It was the strangest face in
the world; the high, domed head with blood-soddened hair,
blood running in several streams down the narrow, corru¬
gated brow and along the black eyebrows above the glazed,
black, numb eyes, in which the last glazing was of ferocity,
stranger even than wonder, the glazed and absolute ferocity
which the man’s last consciousness showed.

It was a long, thin, handsome face, save for those eyes of
glazed ferocity, and for the longish white teeth under the
sparse moustache.

The man was reduced to his last, blank term of being; a
glazed and ghastly ferocity.

Ram6n dropped the hair of his victim, whose head dropped
sideways with a gaping red throat, and rose to a crouching
position. The second bandit was on his knees, but his
hand already clasped his knife. Ram6n crouched. They
were both perfectly still. But Ram6n had got his balance,
crouching between his feet.

The bandit’s black, glazed eyes of blank ferocity took a
glint of cunning. He was stretching. He was going to

leap to his feet for his stroke.

And even as he leaped, Ram6n shot the knife, that was
all bright red as a cardinal bird. It flew red like a bird,
and the drops of Ramon’s handful of blood flew with it,
splashing even Kate, who kept her revolver ready, watching

near the stairway. . . , ,

The bandit dropped on his knees again, and remained tor

a moment kneeling as if in prayer, the red pommel of the
knife sticking out of his abdomen, from his white trousers.
Then he slowly bowed over, doubled up, and went on his
face again, once more with his buttocks in the air.

THE ATTACK ON JAMTLTEPEC

817

Ramon still crouched at attention, almost supernatural,
his dark eyes glittering with watchfulness, in pure, savage
attentiveness. Then he rose, very smooth and quiet, crossed
the blood-stained concrete to the fallen man, picked up the
clean, fallen knife that belonged to the fellow, lifted the red-
dripping chin, and with one stroke drove the knife into the
man’s throat. The man subsided with the blow, not even
twitching.

Then again, Ram6n turned to look at the first man. He
gazed a moment attentively. But that horrible black face
was dead.

And then Ram6n glanced at Kate, as she stood near the
stairs with the revolver. His brow was like a boy’s, very
pure and primitive, and the eyes underneath had a certain
primitive gleaming look of virginity. As men must have
been, in the first awful days, with that strange beauty that
goes with pristine rudimentariness.

For the most part, he did not recognise her. But there
was one remote glint of recognition.

“ Are they both dead?” she asked, awestruck.

“ Creo que si 1” he replied in Spanish.

He turned to look once more, and to pick up the pistol
that lay on the concrete. As he did so, he noticed that his
right hand was bright red, with the blood that flowed still
down his arm. He wiped it on the jacket of the dead man.
But his trousers on his loins were also sodden with blood,
they stuck red to his hips. He did not notice.

He was like a pristine being, remote in consciousness,
and with far, remote sex.

Curious rattling, bubbling noises still came from the second
man, just physical sounds. The first man lay sprawling in
a ghastly fashion, his evil face fixed above a pool of blacken¬
ing blood.

“Watch the stairs!” said Ram6n in Spanish to her,
glancing at her with farouche eyes, from some far remote
jungle. Yet still the glint of recognition sparked furtively
out of the darkness.

He crept to the turret, and stealthily looked out. Then
he crept back, with the same stealth, and dragged the nearest
dead man to the parapet, raising the body till the head
looked over. There was no sound. Then he raised himself,
and peeped over. No sign, no sound.

818

THE PLUMED SERPENT

He looked at the dead body as he let it drop. Then he
went to Kate, to look down the stairs.

“ You grazed that man with your first shot, you only
stunned him I believe,” he said.

“Are there any more?” she asked, shuddering.

“ I think they are all gone.”

He was pale, almost white, with that same pristine clear
brow, like a boy’s, a sort of twilight changelessness.

“ Are you much hurt?” she said.

“I? No 1” and he put his fingers round to his back, to
feel the slowly welling wound, with his bloody fingers.

TLe afternoon was passing towards yellow, heavy
evening.

He went again to look at the terrible face of the first dead
man.

“ Did you know him ?” she said.

He shook his head.

“ Not that I am aware,” he said. Then; “ Good that
he is dead. Good that he is dead.—Good that we killed
them both.”

He looked at her with that glint of savage recognition
from afar.

“ Ugh ! No I It’s terrible I” she said shuddering.

“ Good for me that you were there ! Good that we
killed them between us ! Good they are dead.”

The heavy, luxurious yellow light from below the clouds
gilded the mountains of evening. There was the sound
of a motor-car honking its horn.

Ramon went in silence to the parapet, the blood wetting
his pantaloons lower and lower, since they stuck to him
when he bent down. Rich yellow light flooded the blood¬
stained roof. There was a terrible smell of blood.

“ There is 4 car coming,” he said.

She followed, frightened, across the roof.

She saw the hills and lower slopes inland swimming in
gold light like lacquer. The black huts of the peons, the
lurid leaves of bananas showed up uncannily, the trees green-
gold stood up, with boughs of shadow. And away up the
road was a puther of dust, then the flash of glass as the
automobile turned.

“ Stay here,” said Ram6n, “ while I go down.

“ Why didn’t your peons come and help you? she said.

THE ATTACK ON JAMILTEPEC

819

“ They never do 1” he replied. “ Unless they are armed
on purpose.”

He went, picking up his blouse and putting it on. And
immediately the blood came through.

He went down. She listened to his steps. Below, the
courtyard was all shadow, and empty, save for two dead
white-clothed bodies of men, one near the zaguan, one
against a pillar of the shed.

The motor-car came sounding its horn wildly all the way
between the trees. It lurched into the zaguan. It was
full of soldiers, soldiers standing on the running-boards,
hanging on.

“ Don Ramon ! Don Ramon I” shouted the officer, leap¬
ing out of the car. “ Don Ram6n ! ” He was thundering
at the doors of the inner zaguan.

Why did not Ramon open ? Where was he ?

She leaned over the parapet and screamed like a wild bird :

“ Viene 1 Viene Don Ramon 1 El viene 1”

The soldiers all looked up at her. She drew back in terror.
Then, in a panic, she turned downstairs, to the terrace.
There was blood on the stone stairs, at the bottom, a great
pool. And on the terrace near the rocking-chairs, two dead
men in a great pool of blood.

One was RannSn ! For a moment she went unconscious.
Then slowly she crept forward. Ram6n had fallen, reeking
with blood from his wound, his arms round the body of the
other man, who was bleeding too. The second man opened

hi6 eyes, wildly, and in a rattling voice, blind and dying,
said :

“ Patron !”

It was Martin, Ramon’s own mozo. He was stiffening

and dying in Ramdn’s arms. And Ram6n, lifting him°,

had made his own wound gush with blood, and had fainted.

He lay like dead. But Kate could see the faintest pulse
m his neck.

She ran blindly down the stairs, and fought to get the
V ron bars * rom across the door, screaming all the tame :
di e ,, me 1 Somebody! Come to Don Ramdn 1 He will

««^ C1Tifie<i m L 0y and a woman appeared from the kitchen

. T 5? door WAS °P ened » i«*t as six horse-soldiers
galloped mto the courtyard. The officer leaped from his

820

THE PLUMED SERPENT

horse and ran like a hare, his revolver drawn, his spurs
flashing, straight through the doors and up the stairs, like
a madman. When Kate got up the stairs again, the officer
was standing with drawn revolver, gazing down at Ramdn.

“ He is dead ? ” he said, stupefied, looking at Kate.

“ No !” she said. “ It is only loss of blood.”

The officers lifted Ramon and laid him on the terrace.
Then quickly they got off his blouse. The wound was
bleeding thickly in the back.

“ We’ve got to stop this wound,” said the lieutenant.
“ Where is Pablo? ”

Instantly there was a cry for Pablo.

Kate ran into a bedroom for water, and she switched an
old linen sheet from the bed. Pablo was a young doctor
among the soldiers. Kate gave him the bowl of water, and
the towel, and was tearing the sheet into bands. Ram6n
lay naked on the floor, all streaked with blood. And the
light was going.

“ Bring light!” said the young doctor.

With swift hands he washed the wound, peering with his
nose almost touching it.

“ It is not much !” he said.

Kate had prepared bandages and a pad. She crouched
to hand them to the young man. The woman-servant set
a lamp with a white shade on the floor by the doctor. He
lifted it, peering again at the wound.

“ No !” he said. “ It is not much.”

Then glancing up at the soldiers who stood motionless,
peering down, the light on their dark faces.

“ Te !” he said, making a gesture.

Quickly the lieutenant took the lamp, holding it over the
inert body, and the doctor, with Kate to help, proceeded
to staunch and bind the wound. And Kate, as she touched
the soft, inert flesh of Ram6n, was thinking to herself :
This too is he, this silent body.! And that face that stabbed
the throat of the bandit was he ! And that twilit brow,
and those remote eyes, like a death-virgin, was he. Even
a savage out of the twilight! And the man that knows me,
where is he? One among these many men, no more ! Oh
God ! give the man his soul back, into this bloody body.
Let the soul come back, or the universe will be cold for

me and for many men.

THE ATTACK ON JAMILTEPEC

621

#

i

TSe doctor finished his temporary bandage, looked at
the wound in the arm, swiftly wiped the blood off the loins
and buttocks and legs, and said :

“ We must put him in bed. Lift his bead.**

Quickly Kate lifted the heavy, inert head. The eyes
were half open. The doctor pressed the closed lips, under
the sparse black moustache. But the teeth were firmly 6hut.
The doctor shook his head.

“ Bring a mattress,” he said.

The wind was suddenly roaring, the lamp was leaping with
a long, smoky needle of flame, inside its chimney. Leaves
and dust flew rattling on the terrace, there was a splash of
lightning. Ramdn’s body lay there uncovered and motion¬
less, the bandage was already soaked with blood, under the
darkening, leaping light of the lamp.

And again Kate saw, vividly, how the body is the flame
of the soul, leaping and sinking upon the invisible wick of
the soul. And now the soul, like a wick, seemed spent,
the body was a sinking, fading flame.

Kindle his soul again, oh God !” she cried to herself.

All she could see of the naked body was the terrible absence
of the living soul of it. All she wanted was for the soul
to come back, the eyes to open.

They got him upon the bed and covered him, closing the
doors against the wind and the rain. The doctor chafed
his brow and hands with cognac. And at length the eyes
opened; the soul was there, but standing far back.

. r some moments Ram6n lay with open eyes, without
* C « D £„ 0r Tnovin &- Then he stirred a little.

M What’s the matter?” he said.

ci- S ^’ ^ on R am 6n,” said the doctor, who with his

sum dark hands was even more delicate than a woman.

You have lost much blood. Keep still.”

“ Where is Martin ?”

** He is outside.”

“ How is he ?”

" He is dead.”

anfl h nk dark T yeS und f r the black ,asbes wej, e perfectly steady
*nd changeless. Then came the voice : 7 7

them M WC 4 id u“ 0t kiU them alL Pit y we did not kiU

eot *° kiU thcm

L

i

822

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Here she is.”

His black eyes looked up at Kate,
consciousness came back.

Then more <fi his

Thank you for my life,” he said, closing his eyes.
Then : “ Put the lamp aside.”

Soldiers were tapping at the glass pane, for the lieutenant.
A black little fellow entered, wiping the rain from his black
face and pushing his thick black hair back.

“ There are two more dead on the azotea,” he announced

to his officer.

The lieutenant rose, and followed him out. Kate too
went on to the terrace. In the early darkness the rain
was threshing down. A lantern was coming down from
the roof : it came along the terrace to the stairs, and after
it two soldiers in the pouring rain, carrying a dead body,
then behind, two more, with the other body. The huaraches
of the soldiers clicked and shuffled on the wet terrace. The
dismal cortege went downstairs.

Kate stood on the terrace facing the darkness, while the
rain threshed down. She felt uneasy here, in this house
of men and of soldiers. She found her way down to the
kitchen, where the boy was fanning a charcoal fire, and
the woman was crushing tomatoes on the metate, for a

sauce.

“ Ay, Senora !” cried the woman. “ Five men dead, and
the Patrdn wounded to death ! Ay ! Ay !”

“ Seven men dead !” said the boy. “ Two on the azotea !”

“ Seven men ! Seven men 1”

Kate sat on her chair, stunned, unable to hear anything
but the threshing rain, unable to feel anything more. Two
or three peons came in, and two more women, the men
wrapped to their noses in their blankets. The women
brought masa, and began a great clapping of tortillas. The
people conversed in low, rapid tones, in the dialect, and

Kate could not listen. .

At length the rain began to abate. She knew it would
leave off suddenly. There was a great sound of water
running, gushing, splashing, pouring into the cistern. And
she thought to herself : The rain will wash the blood off
the roof and down the spouts into the cistern. There will

be blood in the water. . , c .

She looked at her own blood-smeared white frock. &ne

THE ATTACK ON JAMELTEPEC

823

felt chilly. She rose to go upstairs again, into the dark,
empty, masterless house.

“ Ah, Sefiora 1 You are going upstairs? Go, Daniel,
carry the lantern for the Senora !”

The boy lit a candle in a lantern, and Kate returned to
the upper terrace. The light shone out of the room where
Ramon was. She went into the salon and got her hat and
her brown shawl. The lieutenant heard her, and came
to her quickly, very kindly and respectful.

“ Won’t you come in, Senora?” he said, holding the door
to the room where Ram6n lay; the guest-room*

Kate went in. Ram6n lay on his side, his black, rather
thin moustache pushed against the pillow. He was himself.

.. At J S T^ er ^ , un P Ie ^ ant for you here, Senora Caterina,” he
said. Would you like to go to your house ? The lieutenant
will send you in the motor-car.”

“ Is there nothing I can do here?” she said.

—T D ° nt stft y here 1 It is too unpleasant for you.

life ” haU SOOD 8Gt UP * and 1 ShaU COme 10 thank y°u for my

fiAr. t“£i

sscrSisas isr

“ h Xh We wh. d t ° Wn l tailS ur ith the y0ung ^tenant.

Sefiora !>> said “th. 0 affair 1 The y ^re not bandits,
oenora! said the young man, with passion. “ Thev

you knir e Sefio^1' ■ Ca ” e to Don Ramdm

but for vour b. 1 u mp y *° “ urder Don Rnmdn. And

m r ^ ~ DO -

SeKnlghtfi “/the

\\ *** y° u sure ?” said Kate.

“ Look*?’ Thp° ra Cned the ^eutenant indignantly
with guns, watching^^p 11 m6n dead * ^o w ere the mozos

own mozo Martin !_ah what U& f *- f vP? C Was ® on R am6n’s

o- ! Never will Don Ram6n parlt M

824

THE PLUMED SERPENT

moreover, the two men killed on the azotea, and two men
in the courtyard, shot by Don Ramon. Besides these, a
man whom Martin wounded, who fell and broke his leg, so
we have got him. Come and see them, Seiiora.”

They were down in the wet courtyard. Little fires had
been lighted under the sheds, and the little, black, devil-
may-care soldiers were crouching round them, with a bunch
of peons in blankets standing round. Across the courtyard,
horses stamped and jingled their harness. A boy came
running with tortillas in a cloth. The dark-faced little
soldiers crouched like animals, sprinkled salt on the tortillas,
and devoured them with small, white, strong teeth.

Kate saw the great oxen tied in their sheds, lying down,
the wagons standing inert. And a little crowd of asses was
munching alfalfa in a corner.

The officer marched beside Kate, his spurs sparking in
the firelight. He went to the muddy car, that stood in the
middle of the yard; then to his horse. From a saddle-
pocket he took an electric torch, and led Kate across to the
end shed.

There he suddenly flashed his light upon seven dead bodies,
laid side by side. The two from the roof were wet. Ramdn’s
dead man lay with his dark, strong breast bare, and his
blackish, thick, devilish face sideways; a big fellow. Kate’s
man lay rigid. Martin had been stabbed in the collar bone;
he looked as if he were staring at the roof of the shed. The
others were two more peons, and two fellows in black boots
and grey trousers and blue overall jackets. They were all
inert and straight and dead, and somehow, a little ridiculous.
Perhaps it is clothing that makes dead people gruesome and
absurd. But also, the grotesque fact that the bodies are
vacant, is always present.

“ Look ! ” said the lieutenant, touching a body with his
toe. “ This is a chauffeur from Sayula; this is a boatman
from Sayula. These two are peons from San Pablo. This
man—” the lieutenant kicked the dead body—“ we don’t
know.” It was Ramdn’s dead man. “ But this man—”
he kicked her dead man, with the tall domed head—“ is
from Ahuajijic, and he was married to the woman that now
lives with a peon here.—You see, Sefiora ! A chauffeur and
a boatman from Sayula—they are Knights-of-Cortes men;
and those two peons from San Pablo are priests* men.—

THE ATTACK ON JAMILTEPEC

825

These are not bandits. It was an attempt at assassination.
But of course they would have robbed everything, every¬
thing, if they had killed Don Ramon.”

Kate was staring at the dead men. Three of them were
handsome; one, the boatman, with a thin line of black
beard framing his shapely face, was beautiful. But dead, with
the mockery of death in his face. All of them men who had
been in the flush of life. Yet dead, they did not even matter.
They were gruesome, but it did not matter that they were
dead men. They were vacant. Perhaps even in life there
had been a certain vacancy, nothingness, in their handsome
physique.

For a pure moment, she wished for men who were not
handsome as these dark natives were. Even their beauty
was suddenly repulsive to her; the dark beauty of half-
created, half-evolved things, left in the old, reptile-like
smoothness. It made her shudder.

The soul 1 If only the soul in man, in woman, would

speak to her, not always this strange, perverse materialism,

or a distorted animalism. If only people were souls, and

their bodies were gestures from the soul ! If one could but

forget both bodies and facts, and be present with strong,
living souls !

She went across the courtyard, that was littered with
horse-droppings, to the car. The lieutenant was choosing
the soldiers who should stay behind. The horse-soldiers
would stay. A peon on a delicate speckled horse, a flea-

6ame trottin g P ast the soldiers in the zaguan.
He had been to Sayula for doctor’s stuff, and to give
messages to the Jefe. * glvc

At last the car, with little soldiers clinging on to it all

satbL rT 0 K d t 8 ° w y ° Ut ° f the court y ard * T he lieutenant
sat beside Kate. He stopped the car again at the big white

hC tTCe l* 1° Ulk to two soldie ” picketed 8 there.

mud thi 7 ° n ’ under the "it trees, in th^

4 i ack i cd beneath the wheels, up the avenue to

Littl h p fi hr ° ad ’ Wh fl re WCre the litt,e black h « ts of the peons
LittU fires were flapping in front of one or two huts women

the small 1 ^fof!d r fi llaS °a the flat earthenwa *e plate’s, upon

a blazing brand, "ke a t^V kinTVe? ^Vfew
peons in dirty-white clothes squatted silent against the

320

THE PLUMED SERPENT

walls of their houses, utterly silent. As the motor-car
turned its great glaring head-lights upon the highroad,
little sandy pigs with short, curly hair started up squealing,
and faces and figures stood out blindly, as in a searchlight.

There was a hut with a wide opening in the black wall,
and a grey old man was standing inside. The car stopped
for the lieutenant to call to the peons under the wall. They
came to the car with their black eyes glaring and glittering
apprehensively. They seemed very much abashed, and
humble, answering the lieutenant.

Meanwhile Kate watched a boy buy a drink for one
centavo and a piece of rope for three centavos, from the
grey old man at the dark hole, which was a shop.

The car went on, the great lights glaring unnaturally
upon the hedges of cactus and mesquite and palo bianco
trees, and upon the great pools of water in the road. It
was a slow progress.

CHAP: XX. MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL.

Kate hid in her own house, numbed. She could not bear
to talk to people. She could not bear even Juana’s bubbling
discourse. The common threads that bound her to humanity
seemed to have snapped. The little human things didn’t
interest her any more. Her eyes seemed to have gone
dark, and blind to individuals. They were all just in¬
dividuals, like leaves in the dark, making a noise. And
she was alone under the trees.

The egg-woman wanted six centavos for an egg.

“ And I said to her—I said to her—we buy them at five
centavos ! ” Juana went on.

Yes 1 ” said Kate. She didn’t care whether they were
bought at five or fifty, or not bought at all.

She didn’t care, she didn’t care, she didn’t care. She
didn t even care about life any more. There was no escap¬
ing her own complete indifference. She felt indifferent to

everything in the whole world, almost she felt indifferent
to death.

t ! , *? ifia ! . Here is the man with the sandals 1

Look I Look how nicely he has made them for you, Nina !

Look what Mexican huaraches the Nina is going to wear ! ”

ShffJ^ ° n ;u ? he man char ged her too much.

She looked at him with her remote, indifferent eyes. But

thL k hT , A«? ^ he *r orld u one must nve » s ° she p aid him iess

accepted ked * thou S h more than he really would have

th^room d °n n i B ? ain u : “ ? er r , ockin g-chair in the shade of

speak to her ?! \° h l al ° ne 1 ° nl y that no oaa should
speak to her. Only that no one should come near her*

Because m reality her soul and spirit were gone, departed

rosier °t f S ° m \ desert > and the erf " rt of reaching
woo i ^ P e e ^ ec t an apparent meeting, or contact
was almost more than she could bear. 8 contact >

Nevl U i in 0 diffe e reie“ d li S k°e dea'tt

827

328

THE PLUMED SERPENT

she let the sun scorch her foot and burn her face inflamed.
Juana made a great outcry over her. The foot blistered
and swelled, her face was red and painful. But it all seemed
to happen merely to her shell. And she was wearily, wanly
indifferent.

Only at the very centre of her sometimes a little flame
rose, and she knew that what she wanted was for her soul
to live. The life of days and facts and happenings was
dead on her, and she was like a corpse. But away inside
her a little light was burning, the light of her innermost
soul. Sometimes it sank and seemed extinct. Then it was
there again.

Ramon had lighted it. And once it was lighted the
world went hollow and dead, all the world-activities were
empty weariness to her. Her soul ! Her frail, innermost
soul ! She wanted to live its life, not her own life.

The time would come again when she would see Ram6n
and Cipriano, and the soul that was guttering would kindle
again in her, and feel strong. Meanwhile she only felt
weak, weak, weak, weak as the dying. She felt that after¬
noon of bloodshed had blown all their souls into the twilight
of death, for the time. But they would come back. They
would come back. Nothing to do but to submit, and wait.
Wait, with a soul almost dead, and hands and heart of
uttermost inert heaviness, indifference.

Ramon had lost much blood. And she, too, in other
ways, had been drained of the blood of the body. She felt
bloodless and powerless.

But wait, wait, wait, the new blood would come.

One day Cipriano came. She was rocking in her salon, in
a cotton housedress, and her face red and rather swollen.
She saw him, in uniform, pass by the window. He stood
in the doorway on the terrace, a dark, grave, small, hand¬
some man.

“ Do come in,” she said with effort.

Her eyelids felt burnt. He looked at her with his full
black eyes, that always had in them so many things she did
not understand. She felt she could not look back at him.

« Have you chased all your rebels ? ” she said.

” For the present,” he replied.

He seemed to be watching, watching for something.

And you didn’t get hurt? ”

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

** No, I didn’t get hurt.”

She looked away out of the door, having nothing to gay
in the world.

“ I went to Jamiltepec yesterday evening,” he said.

“ How is Don Ramon ? ”

“ Yes, he is better.”

“ Quite better? ”

“ No. Not quite better. But he walks a little.**

** Wonderful how people heal.”

“ Yes. We die very easily. But we also come quickly
back to life.”

“ And you ? Did you fight the rebels, or didn’t they
want to fight ? ”

” Yes, they wanted to. We fought once or twice; not
very much.”

“ Men killed ? ”

“Yes! Some 1 Not many, no? Perhaps a hundred.
We can never tell, no? Maybe two hundred.”

He waved his hand vaguely.

“ But you had the worst rebellion at Jamiltepec, no? »»
he said suddenly, with heavy Indian gravity, gloom, sud¬
denly settling down.

j.?,! 1 didn ’ 1 last lon e> but il was rather awful while it

wnl'f 8the b aWfU I’ D °f~ If 1 had known 1 I said to Ram6n,
won t you keep the soldiers ?—the guard, no ? He said they

« » eSSa 7‘ T But here-you never know, no?”

a ! ? le 4 Juana > from the terrace. “ Nina I Don
Antonm says he is coming to see you.”

t( Tell him to come to-morrow.”

“Here he is I ■> she cr ied, and fled.

Of her lindlord on?h d Chair ' to see the st °ut flgnre

a-f <=*> rasas

Cortes heW a hi^Tn ea ;ear^ he ° f

Kate bowed coldly.

He bowed low again, with the doth cap.

830

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Kate said not a word.

He stood on one foot, then on the other, and then marched
forward up the gravel walk, towards the kitchen quarters,
as if he had not seen either Kate or General Viedma. In
a few moments he marched back, as if he could not see
either Kate or the General, through the open door.

Cipriano looked at the passing stout figure of Don Antonio
in a cloth cap as if it were the wind blowing.

“ It is my landlord ! ” said Kate. “ I expect he wants
to know if I am taking on the house for another three
months.”

“ Ram6n wanted me to come and see you—to see how
you are, no?—and to ask you to come to Jamiltepec. Will
you come with me now? The car is here.”

“ Must I? ” said Kate, uneasily.

“ No. Not unless you wish. Ram6n said, not unless
you wished. He said, perhaps it would be painful to you,
no ?—to go to Jamiltepec again—so soon after—”

How curious Cipriano was 1 He stated things as if they
were mere bare facts with no emotional content at all. As
for its being painful to Kate to go to Jamiltepec, that
meant nothing to him.

” Lucky thing you were there that day, no ? ” he said.
“ They might have killed him. Very likely they would 1
Very likely! Awful, no? ”

“ They might have killed me too,” she said.

“ Yes ! Yes ! They might 1 ” he acquiesced.

Curious he was ! With a sort of glaze of the ordinary
world on top, and underneath a black volcano with hell
knows what depths of lava. And talking half-abstractedly
from his glazed, top self, the words came out small and
quick, and he was always hesitating, and saying : No? It
wasn’t himself at all talking.

“ What would you have done if they had killed Ram6n ? ”
she said, tentatively.

“ I ? —He looked up at her in a black flare of appre¬

hension. The volcano was rousing. “ If they had killed
him?—” His eyes took on that fixed glare of ferocity,
staring her down.

« Would you have cared very much ? ” she said.

“I? Would I? ” he repeated, and the black suspicious
look came into his Indian eye*-

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

331

** Would it have meant very much to you ? ”

He still watched her with a glare of ferocity and sus¬
picion.

“ To me ! ” he said, and he pressed his hand against the
buttons of his tunic. “ To me Ram6n is more than life.
More than life.*’ His eyes seemed to glare and go sightless,
as he said it, the ferocity melting in a strange blind, con¬
fiding glare, that seemed sightless, either looking inward,
or out at the whole vast void of the cosmos, where no
vision is left.

“ More than anything? ” she said.

“ Yes 1 ” he replied abstractedly, with a blind nod of
the head.

Then abruptly he looked at her and said :

“ You saved his life.”

By this he meant that therefore —But she could not
understand the therefore.

She went to change, and they set off to Jamiltepec.
Cipriano made her a little uneasy, sitting beside him. He
made her physically aware of him, of his small but strong
and assertive body, with its black currents and storms
of desire. The range of him was very limited, really. The
great part of his nature was just inert and heavy, un¬
responsive, limited as a snake or a lizard is limited. But
within his own heavy, dark range he had a curious power.
Almost she could see the black fume of power which he

emitted, the dark, heavy vibration of his blood, which
cast a spell over her.

As they sat side by side in the motor-car, silent, swaying
to the broken road, she could feel the curious tingling heat

nnP^? bI °° d -’ a " d the b eav y Power of the will that lay
unemetged in his blood. She could see again the skies

d 5 rk » “ d t J he P h allic mystery rearing itself like a whirl-
dark * , . oud » the zenith, till it pierced the sombre,

self‘h. 2 ?? Ith ’ ? d * su P reme Phallic mystery. And her-

r!n f everlask,n g twilight, a sky above where the sun

rose un to y bl«ok earth be !? W where the tre€s and cre *tures
i ,. P in blackness, and man strode along naked, dark

half-visible, and suddenly whirled in supreme power
thTv?4 Knith. dark Whirlwind column » whirling to pierce
The mystery of the primeval world 1 She could feel it

332

THE PLUMED SERPENT

now in all its shadowy, furious magnificence. She knew
now what was the black, glinting look in Cipriano’s eyes.
She could understand marrying him, now. In the shadowy
world where men were visionless, and winds of fury rose
up from the earth, Cipriano was still a power. Once you
entered his mystery the scale of all things changed, and
he became a living male power, undefined, and unconfined.
The smallness, the limitations ceased to exist. In his black,
glinting eyes the power was limitless, and it was as if, from
him, from his body of blood could rise up that pillar of
cloud which swayed and swung, like a rearing serpent or a
rising tree, till it swept the zenith, and all the earth below
was dark and prone, and consummated. Those small
hands, that little natural tuft of black goats’ beard hanging
light from his chin, the tilt of his brows and the slight slant
of his eyes, the domed Indian head with its thick black
hair, they were like symbols to her, of another mystery,
the bygone mystery of the twilit, primitive world, where
shapes that are small suddenly loom up huge, gigantic on
the shadow, and a face like Cipriano’s is the face at once
of a god and a devil, the undying Pan face. The bygone
mystery, that has indeed gone by, but has not passed away.
Never shall pass away.

As he sat in silence, casting the old, twilit Pan-power
over her, she felt herself submitting, succumbing. He was
once more the old dominant male, shadowy, intangible,
looming suddenly tall, and covering the sky, making a
darkness that was himself and nothing but himself, the
Pan male. And she was swooned prone beneath, perfect
in her proneness.

It was the ancient phallic mystery, the ancient god-
devil of the male Pan. Cipriano unyielding forever, in the
ancient twilight, keeping the ancient twilight around him.
She understood now his power with his soldiers. He had
the old gift of demon-power.

He would never woo; she saw this. When the power
of his blood rose in him, the dark aura streamed from him
like a cloud pregnant with power, like thunder, and rose
like a whirlwind that rises suddenly in the twilight and
raises a great pliant column, swaying and leaning with
power, clear between heaven and earth.

Ah 1 and what a mystery of prone submission, on her

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

888

part, this huge erection would imply ! Submission absolute,
like the earth under the sky. Beneath an over-arching
absolute.

Ah! what a marriage! How terrible ! and how com¬
plete ! With the finality of death, and yet more than
death. The arms of the twilit Pan. And the awful, half-
intelligible voice from the cloud.

She could conceive now her marriage with Cipriano; the
supreme passivity, like the earth below the twilight, con¬
summate in living lifelessness, the sheer solid mystery of
passivity. Ah, what an abandon, what an abandon, what
an abandon 1—of so many things she wanted to abandon.

Cipriano put his hand, with its strange soft warmth and

weight, upon her knee, and her soul melted like fused
metal.

“ En poco tiempo, verdad ? ” he said to her, looking
into her eyes with the old, black, glinting look, of power
about to consummate itseli.

“ In a little while, no? ”

She looked back at him, wordless. Language had

abandoned her, and she leaned silent and helpless in the

vast, unspoken twilight of the Pan world. Her self had

abandoned her, and all her day was gone. Only she said
to herself : J

** My demon lover ! **

Her COU ! d end in man y wa y s » and this was one of

them. Back to the twilight of the ancient Pan world, where
the soul of woman was dumb, to be forever unspoken.

, hc L ca f " ad sto Pped, they had come to Jamiltepec. He
ooked at her again, as reluctantly he opened the door.
And as he stepped out, she realised again his uniform, his

onlv knn U ^ K T She had lost * entirely. She had

. hlS f ? Ce ’ the face of the supreme god^emon;

te i h ifur 8 a ? d ^ghtly slanting eyes, and the

lSg Pam 1 f a g0aM>eard ' Th « Master. The ever-

prfvel W t a L 1 r^ ing baC l at h f r a ^ ain » usin 6 ®I1 his power to
thp tnrm? ■ ng m the httle general in uniform, in

nothC dly v,slon - And 5he avoided hi “ “™'«"

ch^aJ Ram6 “ « ttin S “ his white clothes in a long
the terrace. He was creamy-brown in his pallor!

834

THE PLUMED SERPENT

He saw at once the change in Kate. She had the face
of one waking from the dead, curiously dipped in death,
with a tenderness far more new and vulnerable than a
child’s. He glanced at Cipriano. Cipriano’s face seemed
darker than usual, with that secret hauteur and aloofness
of the savage. He knew it well.

“ Are you better? ” Kate asked.

“ Very nearly I ” he said, looking up at her gently.
“ And you ? ”

“ Yes, I am all right.”

“ You are ? ”

“ Yes, I think so.—I have felt myself all lost, since that
day. Spiritually, I mean. Otherwise I am all right. Are
you healing well ? ”

“ Oh, yes ! I always heal quickly.”

“ Knives and bullets are horrible things.”

** Yes—in the wrong place.”

Kate felt rather as if she were coming to, from a swoon,
as Ramon spoke to her and looked at her. His eyes, his
voice seemed kind. Kind ? The word suddenly was strange
to her, she had to try to get its meaning.

There was no kindness in Cipriano. The god-demon Pan
preceded kindness. She wondered if she wanted kindness.
She did not know. Everything felt numb.

“ I was wondering whether to go to England,” she said.

“ Again ? ” said Ram6n, with a slight smile. “ Away
from the bullets and the knives, is that it? ”

“ Yes !—to get away.” And she sighed deeply.

“ No 1 ” said Ram6n. “ Don’t go away. You will find
nothing in England.”

“ But can I go on here ? ”

“ Can you help it? ”

“ I wish I knew what to do.”

“ How can one know ? Something happens inside you,
and all your decisions are smoke.—Let happen what will
happen.”-

“ I can’t quite drift as if I had no soul of my own,
can I? ”

“ Sometimes it is best.”-

There was a pause. Cipriano stayed outside the con¬
versation altogether, in a dusky world of his own, apart
and secretly hostile.

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

885

“ I have been thinking so much about you,*’ she said to
Ram6n, “ and wondering whether it ia worth while.”
“What?”

“ What you are doing; trying to change the religion of
these people. If they have any religion to change. I don’t
think they are a religious people. They are only super¬
stitious. I have no use for men and women who go crawl¬
ing down a church aisle on their knees, or holding up their
arms for hours. There’s something stupid and wrong about
it. They never worship a God. Only some little evil power.
I have been wondering so much if it is worth while giving
yourself to them, and exposing yourself to them. It would
be horrible if you were really killed. I have seen you look
dead.”

“ Now you see me look alive again,” he smiled.

But a heavy silence followed.

“ I believe Don Cipriano knows them better than you
do. I believe he knows best, if it is any good,” she said.

“ And what does he say? ” asked Ram6n.

I say l am Ramdn’s man,” replied Cipriano stubbornly.
Kate looked at him, and mistrusted him. In the long
run he was nobody’s man. He was that old, masterless
£an-male, that could not even conceive of service; par¬
ticularly the service of mankind. He saw only glory; the

black mystery of glory consummated. And himself like
a wind of glory.

“ * fee > you down,” said Kate to Ramon.

Maybe . But I shan’t let myself down. I do what I
believe in. Possibly I am only the first step round the

coS!Lwhv w m e * But ; ce n ’ est que le P re ^ ier P as ^

» . • i?^ 1 £° U DOt round the corner with us ? At

least it is better than sitting still.”

thff 01 ansv ! er , his question. She sat looking at

and u the lake ’ and the thought of that
afternoon came over her again. 6

thT™nf? dld u thOS f l 7° men 8 e t in; those two bandits on
the roof? she asked wonderingly.

pointed to the terrace projecting towards the lake, opposite

836

THE PLUMED SERPENT

the one where his own room was, and the covered balcony.
“ She got entangled with one of the peons; a sort of second
overseer, called Guillermo. Guillermo had got a wife and
four children, but he came to me to say could he change
and take Maruca—the sewing girl. I said no, he could
stay with his family. And I sent Maruca back to Mexico.
But she had had a smattering of education, and thought
she was equal to anything. She got messages through to
Guillermo, and he ran away and joined her in Mexico,
leaving wife and four children here. The wife then went
to live with another peon—the blacksmith—whose wife had
died and who was supposed to be a good match; a decent
fellow.

“ One day appeared Guillermo, and said : could he come
back ? I said not with Maruca. He said he didn’t want
Maruca, he wanted to come back. His wife was willing to
go back to him again with the children. The blacksmith
was willing to let her go. I said very well; but he had
forfeited his job as sub-overseer, and must be a peon again.

“ And he seemed all right—satisfied. But then Maruca
came and stayed in Sayula, pretending to make her living
as a dressmaker. She was in with the priest; and she got
Guillermo again.

“ It seems the Knights of Cortes had promised a big
reward for the man who would bring in my scalp; secretly,
of course. The girl got Guillermo : Guillermo got those
two peons, one from San Pablo and one from Ahuajijic;
somebody else arranged for the rest.

“ The bedroom the girl used to have is that one, on the
terrace not far from where the stairs go up to the roof.
The bedroom has a lattice window, high up, looking out on
the trees. There’s a big laurel de India grows outside. It
appears the girl climbed on a table and knocked the iron
lattice of the window loose, while she was living here, and
that Guillermo, by taking a jump from the bough—a very
risky thing, but then he was one of that sort—could land
on the window-sill and pull himself into the room.

Apparently he and the other two men were going to get
the scalp and pillage the house before the others could
enter. So the first one, the man I killed, climbed the tree,
and with a long pole shoved in the lattice of the window,
and so got into the room, and up the terrace stairs.

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

887

“ Martin, my man, who was waiting on the other stairs,
ready if they tried to blow out the iron door, heard the
smash of the window and rushed round just as the second
bandit—the one you shot—was crouching on the window¬
sill to jump down into the room. The window is quite
small, and high up.

“ Before Martin could do anything the man had jumped
down on top of him and stabbed him twice with his machete.
Then he took Martin’s knife and came up the stairs, when
you shot him in the head.

“ Martin was on the floor when he saw the hands of a
third man gripping through the window. Then the face of
Guillermo. Martin got up and gave the hands a slash with
the heavy machete, and Guillermo fell smash back down on
to the rocks under the wall.

“ When I came down, I found Martin lying outside the
door of that room. He told me— They came through there t
Patron. Guillermo was one of them.

“ Guillermo broke his thigh on the rocks, and the soldiers
found him. He confessed everything, and said he was sorry,
and begged ray pardon. He’s in the prison hospital now.”

“ And Maruca? ” said Kate.

“ They’ve got her too.”

** There will always be a traitor,” said Kate gloomily.

” Let us hope there will also be a Caterina,” said Ram6n

“ But will you go on with it—your Quetzalcoatl ? ”

“ How can I leave off ? It’s my metier now. Why don’t
you join us? Why don’t you help me? ”

“ How ? ”

“ You see. Soon you will hear the drums again.
Soon the first day of Quetzalcoatl will come. You will see.
Then Cipriano will appear—in the red sarape—and Huit¬
zilopochtli will share the Mexican Olympus with Quetzal¬
coatl. Then I want a goddess.”

“ But will Don Cipriano be the god Huitzilopochtli ? ”
she asked, taken aback.

“ First Man of Huitzilopochtli, as I am First Man of
Quetzalcoatl.” .

^said Kate to Cipriano. “ That horrible

! ” said Cipriano, with a subtle smile of
hauteur, the secret savage coming into his own.

" Will you ? ”

Huitzilopochtli?
«« _

338

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Not the old Huitzilopochtli—but the new,” said
Ram6n. “ And then there must come a goddess; wife jt
virgin, there must come a goddess. Why not you, as the
First Woman of—say Itzpapalotl, just for the sound of the
name ? ”

“ I ? ” said Kate. “ Never 1 I should die of shame.”

“Shame?” laughed Ram6n. “Ah, Sefiora Caterina,
why shame ? This is a thing that must be done. There
must be manifestations. We must change back to the
vision of the living cosmos; we must. The oldest Pan
is in us, and he will not be denied. In cold blood and in
hot blood both, we must make the change. That is how
man is made. I accept the must from the oldest Pan in
my soul, and from the newest me. Once a man gathers
his whole soul together and arrives at a conclusion, the
time of alternatives has gone. I must. No more than
that. I am the First Man of Quetzalcoatl. I am Quetzal-
coatl himself, if you like. A manifestation, as well as a
man. I accept myself entire, and proceed to make destiny.
Why, what else can I do ? ”

Kate was silent. His loss of blood seemed to have washed
him curiously fresh again, and he was carried again out of
the range of human emotion. A strange sort of categorical
imperative ! She saw now his power over Cipriano. It lay
in this imperative which he acknowledged in his own soul,
and which really was like a messenger from the beyond.

She looked on like a child looking through a railing;
rather wistful, and rather frightened.

Ah, the soul I The soul was always flashing and darken¬
ing into new shapes, each one strange to the other. She
had thought Ramon and she had looked into each other’s
souls. And now, he was this pale, distant man, with a
curious gleam, like a messenger from the beyond, in his
soul. And he was remote, remote from any woman.

Whereas Cipriano had suddenly opened a new world to
her, a world of twilight, with the dark, half-visible face of
the god-demon Pan, who can never perish, but ever returns
upon mankind from the shadows. The world of shadows
and dark prostration, with the phallic wind rushing through

the dark. ,

Cipriano had to go to the town at the end of the lake,
near the State of Colima; to Jaramay. He was going in

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL 839

a motor-boat with a couple of soldiers. Would Kate go
with him ?

He waited, in heavy silence, for her answer.

She said she would. She was desperate. She did not
want to be sent back to her own empty, dead house.

It was one of those little periods when the rain seems
strangled, the air thick with thunder, silent, ponderous
thunder latent in the air from day to day, among the thick,
heavy sunshine. Kate, in these days in Mexico, felt that
between the volcanic violence under the earth, and the
electric violence of the air above, men walked dark and
incalculable, like demons from another planet.

The wind on the lake seemed fresh, from the west, Dut
it was a running mass of electricity, that burned her face
and her eyes and the roots of her hair. When she had
wakened in the night and pushed the sheets, heavy sparks
fell from her finger-tips. She felt she could not live.

The lake was like some frail milk of thunder; the dark
soldiers curled under the awning of the boat, motionless.
They seemed dark as lava and sulphur, and full of a dor¬
mant, diabolic electricity. Like salamanders. The boat-
, man in the stern, steering, was handsome almost like tHe
man she had killed. But this one had pale greyish eyes,
phosphorescent with flecks of silver.

Cipriano sat in silence in front of her. He had removed
his tunic, and his neck rose almost black from his white
shirt. She could see how different his blood was from hers,
dark, blackish, like the blood of lizards among hot black
rocks. She could feel its changeless surge, holding up his
light, bluey-black head as on a fountain. And she would
feel her own pride dissolving, going.

She felt he wanted his blood-stream to envelop hers.
As if it could possibly be. He was so still, so unnoticing,
and the darkness of the nape of his neck was so like in¬
visibility. Yet he was always waiting, waiting, waiting,
invisibly and ponderously waiting.

She lay under the awning in the heat and light without
looking out. The wind made the canvas crackle.

Whether the time was long or short, she knew not. But

they were coming to the silent lake-end, where the beach

curved round in front of them. It seemed sheer lonely
sunlight.

840

THE PLUMED SERPENT

But beyond the shingle there were willow trees, and a
low ranch-house. Three anchored canoas rode with their
black, stiff lines. There were flat lands, with maize half
grown and blowing its green flags sideways. But all was
as if invisible, in the intense hot light.

The warm, thin water ran shallower and shallower, to
the reach of shingle beyond. Black water-fowl bobbed
like corks. The motor stopped. The boat ebbed on. Under
the thin water were round stones, with thin green hair of
weed. They would not reach the shore—not by twenty
yards.

The soldiers took off their huaraches, rolled their cotton
trousers up their black legs, and got into the water. The
tall boatman did the same, pulling forward the boat. She
would go no farther. He anchored her with a big stone.
Then with his uncanny pale eyes, under the black lashes,
he asked Kate in a low tone if he could carry her ashore,
offering her his shoulder.

“ No, no ! ” she said. “ I’ll paddle.”

And hastily she took off her shoes and stockings and
stepped into the shallow water, holding up her thin
skirt of striped silk. The man laughed; so did the
soldiers.

The water was almost hot. She went blindly forward,
her head dropped. Cipriano watched her with the silent,
heavy, changeless patience of his race, then when she
reached the shingle he came ashore on the boatman’s
shoulders.

They crossed the hot shingle to the willow-trees by the
maize-fields, and sat upon boulders. The lake stretched
pale and unreal, far, far away into the invisible, with
dimmed mountains rising on either side, bare and abstract.
The canoas were black and stiff, their masts motionless.
The white motor-boat rode near. Black birds were bobbing
like corks, at this place of the water’s end and the world’s
end.

A lonely woman went up the shingle with a water-jar
on her shoulder. Hearing a sound, Kate looked, and saw
a group of fishermen holding a conclave in a dug-out hollow
by a tree. They saluted, looking at her with black, black
eyes. They saluted humbly, and yet in their black eyes
was that ancient remote hardness and hauteur.

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

841

Cipriano had sent the soldiers for horses. It was too
hot to walk.

They sat silent in the invisibility of this end of the lake,
the great light taking sight away.

“Why am I not the living Huitzilopochtli ? ” said
Cipriano quietly, looking full at her with his black eyes.

“ Do you feel you are? ” she said, startled.

“ Yes,” he replied, in the same low, secret voice. “ It
is what I feel.”

The black eyes looked at her with a rather awful challenge.
And the small, dark voice seemed to take all her will away.
They sat in silence, and she felt she was fainting, losing her
consciousness for ever.

The soldiers came, with a black Arab horse for him; a
delicate thing; and for her a donkey, on which she could
sit sideways. He lifted her into the saddle, where she sat
only half-conscious. A soldier led the donkey, and they
set off, past the long, frail, hanging fishing nets, that made
long filmy festoons, into the lane.

Then out into the sun and the grey-black dust, towards
the grey-black, low huts of Jaramay, that lined the wide,
desert road.

Jaramay was hot as a lava oven. Black low hut-houses

with tiled roofs lined the broken, long, delapidated street.

Broken houses. Blazing sun. A brick pavement all smashed

and sun-worn. A dog leading a blind man along the little

black walls, on the broken pavement. A few goats. And

unspeakable lifelessness, emptiness.

They came to the broken plaza, with sun-decayed church

and ragged palm trees. Emptiness, sun, sun-decay, sun-

del apidation. One man on a dainty Arab horse trotting

hghtly over the stones, gun behind, big hat making a dark

lace. For the rest, the waste space of the centre of life.

Umous how dainty the horse looked, and the horseman

* erec ^’ am id the sun-roasted ruin.

Ttey c.me to a big building. A few soldiers were drawn

XJS* h S ent ™ nce * The y saluted Cipriano as if they were
transfixed, rolling their dark eyes. •

th^SIT 0 WaS frora his horse in a moment. Emitting

oLeauimJ* yS ° f dan e er . ous power, he found the Jefe all

thei^Jn ’ ?• f ? t ™ an m dirt y w hite clothes. They put
their wills entirely in his power. P

342

THE PLUMED SERPENT

He asked for a room where his esposa could rest. Kate
was pale and all her will had left her. He was carrying
her on his will.

He accepted a large room with a brick-tiled floor and a
large, new brass bed with a coloured cotton cover thrown
over it, and with two chairs. The strange, dry, stark
emptiness, that looked almost cold in the heat.

“ The sun makes you pale. Lie down and rest. I will
close the windows,” he said.

He closed the shutters till only a darkness remained.

Then in the darkness, suddenly, softly he touched her,
stroking her hip.

“ I said you were my wife,” he said, in his small, soft
Indian voice. “ It is true, isn’t it? ”

She trembled, and her limbs seemed to fuse like metal
melting down. She fused into a molten unconsciousness,
her will, her very self gone, leaving her lying in molten
life, like a lake of still fire, unconscious of everything save
the eternality of the fire in which she was gone. Gone in
the fadeless fire, which has no death. Only the fire can
leave us, and we can die.

And Cipriano the master of fire. The Living Huitzilo-
pochtli, he had called himself. The living firemaster. The
god in the flame; the salamander.

One cannot have one’s own way, and the way of the gods.

It has to be one or the other.

When she went out into the next room, he was sitting
alone, waiting for her. He rose quickly, looking at her with
black, flashing eyes from which dark flashes of light seemed
to play upon her. And he took her hand, to touch her

ag “Will you come to eat at the little restaurant?” he
s&id*

In* the uncanny flashing of his eyes she saw a gladness
that frightened her a little. His touch on her hand was
uncannily soft and inward. His words said nothing; would
never say anything. But she turned aside her face, a little
afraid of that flashing, primitive gladness, which was so

impersonal and beyond her. . .

Wrapping a big yellow-silk shawl around her, Spanish

fashion, against the heat, and taking her white sunshade

lined with green, she stepped out with him past the bowing

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

848

Jefe and the lieutenant, and the saluting soldiers. She
shook hands with the Jefe and the lieutenant. They were
men of flesh and blood, they understood her presence, and
bowed low, looking up at her with flashing eyes. And she
knew what it was to be a goddess in the old style, saluted
by the real fire in men’s eyes, not by their lips.

In her big, soft velour hat of jade green, her breast
wrapped round with the yellow brocade shawl, she stepped
across the sun-eaten plaza, a sort of desert made by man,
softly, softly beside her Cipriano, soft as a cat, hiding her
face under her green hat and her sunshade, keeping her
body secret and elusive. And the soldiers and the officers
and clerks of the Jefatura, watching her with fixed black
eyes, saw, not the physical woman herself, but the in¬
accessible, voluptuous mystery of man’s physical consum¬
mation.

They ate in the dusky little cavern of a fonda kept by a
queer old woman with Spanish blood in her veins. Cipriano
was very sharp and imperious in his orders, the old woman

scuffled and ran in a sort of terror. But she was thrilled
to her soul.

Kate was bewildered by the new mystery of her own

elusiveness. She was elusive even to herself. Cipriano

hardly talked to her at all; which was quite right. She did

not want to be talked to, and words addressed straight at

her, without the curious soft veiling which these people

knew how to put into their voices, speaking only to the

unconcerned, third person in her, came at her like blows.

Ah, the ugly blows of direct, brutal speech ! She had

suffered so much from them. Now she wanted this veiled

elusiveness in herself, she wanted to be addressed in the
third person.

After the lunch they went to look at the sarapes which
were being spun for Ram6n. Their two soldiers escorted

littl? loi e w y l rd u UP a broken > sun-wasted wide street of
little, low black houses, then knocked at big doors.

dark shaSe nfth C - ***** shade ° f the the

on tamfn^ K the , mner court > or P*tio, where sun blazed
A fat beyond, was a whole weaver’s establishment.

Kata* J ^ - Sent a Uttle b °y to fetch chairs. But

Kate wandered, fascinated.

In the zaguan was a great heap of silky white wool, very

844

THE PLUMED SERPENT

fine, and in the dark corridor of the patio all the people
at work. Two boys with flat square boards bristling with
many little wire bristles were carding the white wool into thin
films, which they took off the boards in fine rolls like mist,
and laid beside the two girls at the end of the shed.

These girls stood by their wheels, spinning, standing
beside the running wheel, which they set going with one
hand, while with the other hand they kept a long, miracu¬
lous thread of white wool-yarn dancing at the very tip of
the rapidly-spinning spool-needle, the filmy rolls of the
carded wool just touching the point of the spool, and at
once running out into a long, pure thread of white, which
wound itself on to the spool, and another piece of carded
wool was attached. One of the girls, a beautiful oval-faced
one, who smiled shyly at Kate, was very clever. It was
almost miraculous the way she touched the spool and drew
out the thread of wool almost as fine as sewing cotton.

At the other end of the corridor, under the black shed,
were two looms, and two men weaving. They treddled at
the wooden tread-looms, first with one foot and then the
other, absorbed and silent, in the shadow of the black mud
walls. One man was weaving a brilliant scarlet sarape,
very fine, and of the beautiful cochineal red. It was diffi¬
cult work. From the pure scarlet centre zigzags of black
and white were running in a sort of whorl, away to the edge,
that was pure black. Wonderful to see the man, with small
bobbins of fine red and white yarn, and black, weaving a
bit of the ground, weaving the zigzag of black up to it, and,
up to that, the zigzag of white, with deft, dark fingers,
quickly adjusting his setting needle, quick as lightning
threading his pattern, then bringing down the beam heavily
to press it tight. The sarape was woven on a black warp,
long fine threuds of black, like a harp. But beautiful be¬
yond words the perfect, delicate scarlet weaving in.

“ For whom is that? ” said Kate to Cipriano. ‘ *or

you ? ”

“ Yes,” he said. “ For me I ”

The other weaver was weaving a plain white sarape witn
blue and natural-black ends, throwing the spool of yam from
side to side, between the white harp-strings, pressing down
each thread of his woof heavily, with the wooden bar, then
treddling to change the long, fine threads of the warp.

845

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

In the shadow of the mud shed, the pure colours of the
lustrous wool looked mystical, the cardinal scarlet, the pure,
silky white, the lovely blue, and the black, gleaming in the
shadow of the blackish walls.

The fat man with the one eye brought sarapes, and two
boys opened them one by one. There was a new one, white,
with close flowers of blue on black stalks, and with green
leaves, forming the borders, and at the boca, the mouth,
where the head went through, a whole lot of little, rainbow-
coloured flowers, in a coiling blue circle.

“ I love that 1 ” said Kate. “ What is that for? ”

“ It is one of Ramon’s; they are Quetzalcoatl’s colours,
the blue and white and natural black. But this one is for
the day of the opening of the flowers, when he brings in
the goddess who will come,” said Cipriano.

Kate was silent with fear.

There were two scarlet sarapes with a diamond at the
centre, all black, and a border-pattern of black diamonds.
44 Are these yours ? ”

“ Well, they are for the messengers of Huitzilopochtli.
Those are my colours : scarlet and black. But I myself
have white as well, just as Ramdn has a fringe of my
scarlet.”

“ Doesn’t it make you afraid? ” she said to him, looking
at him rather blenched.

44 How make me afraid? ”

“ To do this. To be the living Huitzilopochtli,” she said.
“I am the living Huitzilopochtli,” he said. “ When
Ram6n dares to be the living Quetzalcoatl, I dare to be the
living Huitzilopochtli. I am he.—Am I not? ”

Kate looked at him, at his dark face with the little hang-
mg tuft of beard, the arched brows, the slightly slanting
black eyes. In the round, fierce gaze of his eyes there was
a certain silence, like tenderness, for her. But beyond that,

an inhuman assurance, which looked far, far beyond her,
m the darkness.

And she hid her face from him, murmuring:

4 I know you are.”

44 And on the day of flowers,” he said, 44 you, too, shall
come, m a green dress they shall weave you, with blue

flowers ** tilC sc * m, 0X1 y our head the new moon of

846

THE PLUMED SERPENT

She hid her face, afraid.

** Come and look at the wools,” he said, leading her
across the patio to the shade where, on a line, the yarn
hung in dripping tresses of colour, scarlet and blue and
yellow and green and brown.

“ See 1 ” he said. “ You shall have a dress of green,
that leaves the arms bare, and a white under-dress with
blue flowers.”

The green was a strong apple-green colour.

Two women under the shed were crouching over big
earthenware vessels, which sat over a fire which burned
slowly in a hole dug in the ground. They were watching the
steaming water. One took dried, yellow-brown flowers,
and flung them in her water as if she were a witch brewing
decoctions. She watched as the flowers rose, watched as
they turned softly in the boiling water. Then she threw
in a little white powder.

“ And on the day of flowers you, too, will come. Ah !
If Ram6n is the centre of a new world, a world of new
flowers shall spring up round him, and push the old world
back. I call you the First Flower.”

They left the courtyard. The soldiers had brought the
black Arab stallion for Cipriano, and for her the donkey, on
which she could perch sideways, like a peasant woman.
So they went through the hot, deserted silence of the mud-
brick town, down the lane of deep, dark-grey dust, under
vivid green trees that were bursting into flower, again to
the silent shore of the lake-end, where the delicate fishing
nets were hung in long lines and blowing in the wind, loop
after loop striding above the shingle and blowing delicately
in the wind, as away on the low places the green maize was
blowing, and the fleecy willows shook like soft green feathers
hanging down.

The lake stretched pale and unreal into nowhere; the
motor-boat rode near in, the black canoas stood motionless
a little further out. Two women, tiny as birds, were kneel¬
ing on the water’s edge, washing.

Kate jumped from her donkey on to the shingle.

“ Why not ride through the water to the boat? ” said

Cipriano.

She looked at the boat, and thought of the donkey
stumbling and splashing.

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

847

“ No,” she said. “ I will wade again.”

He rode his black Arab to the water. It sniffed, and
entered with delicate feet into the warm shallows. Then,
a little way in, it stood and suddenly started pawing the
water, as a horse paws the ground, in the oddest manner
possible, very rapidly striking the water with its fore-foot,
so that little waves splashed up over its black legs and belly.

But this splashed Cipriano too. He lifted tb*> reins and
touched the creature with his spurs. It jumped, and went
half-stumbling, half-dancing through the water, prettily,
with a splashing noise. Cipriano quieted it, and it waded
gingerly on through the shallows of the vast lake, bending
its black head down to look, to look in a sort of fascination
at the stony bottom, swaying its black tail as it moved
its glossy, raven haunches gingerly.

Then again it stood still, and suddenly, with a rapid
beating of its fore-paw, sent the water hollowly splashing
up, till its black belly glistened wet like a black serpent,
and its legs were shiny wet pillars. And again Cipriano
lifted its head and touched it with the spurs, so the delicate
creature danced in a churn of water.

“ Oh, it looks so pretty 1 It looks so pretty when it paws
the water! ” cried Kate from the shore. “ Why does it
do it? ”

Cipriano turned in the saddle and looked back at her
with the sudden, gay Indian laugh.

“ It likes to be wet—who knows ? ” he said.

A soldier hurried wading through the water and took the
horse’s bridle. Cipriano dismounted neatly from the stirrup,
with a little backward leap into the boat, a real savage
horseman. The barefoot soldier leaped into the saddle,
and turned the horse to shore. But the black horse, male
and wilful, insisted on stopping to paw the waters and
splash himself, with a naive, wilful sort of delight.

^ “ Look ! Look ! ” cried Kate. “ It’s so pretty.”

But the soldier was perching in the saddle, drawing up
his legs like a monkey, and shouting at the horse. It would
wet its fine harness.

He rode the Arab slanting through the water, to where
an old woman, sitting in her own silence and almost invisible
before, was squatted in the water with brown bare shoulders
emerging, ladling water from a half gourd-shell over her

348

THE PLUMED SERPENT

matted grey head. The horse splashed and danced, the old
woman rose with her rag of chemise clinging to her, scolding
in a quiet voice and bending forward with her calabash
cup; the soldier laughed, the black horse joyfully and ex¬
citedly pawed the water and made it splash high up, the
soldier shouted again.—But the soldier knew he could make
Cipriano responsible for the splashings.

Kate waded slowly to the boat, and stepped in. The
water was warm, but the wind was blowing with strong,
electric heaviness. Kate quickly dried her feet and legs
on her handkerchief, and pulled on her biscuit-coloured
silk stockings and brown shoes.

She sat looking back, at the lake-end, the desert of
shingle, the blowing, gauzy nets, and, beyond them, the
black land with green maize standing, a further fleecy green
of trees, and the broken lane leading deep into the rows
of old trees, where the soldiers from Jaramay were now
riding away on the black horse and the donkey. On the
right there was a ranch, too; a long, low black building
and a cluster of black huts with tiled roofs, empty gardens
with reed fences, clumps of banana and willow trees. All
in the changeless, heavy light of the afternoon, the long
lake reaching into invisibility, between its unreal moun¬
tains.

“ It is beautiful here 1 ” said Kate. “ One could almost
live here.”

“ Ram6n says he will make the lake the centre of a new
world,” said Cipriano. “ We will be the gods of the lake.”

“ I’m afraid I am just a woman,” said Kate.

His black eyes came round at her swiftly.

“ What does it mean, just a woman? ” he said, quickly.

sternly.

She hung her head. What did it mean ? What indeed
did it mean ? Just a woman ! She let her soul sink again
into the lovely elusiveness where everything is possible,
even that oneself is elusive among the gods.

The motor-boat, with waves slapping behind, was running
quickly along the brownish pale water. The soldiers, who
were in the front, for balance, crouched on the floor with
the glazed, stupefied mask-faces of the people when they
are sleepy. And soon they were a heap in the bottom of
the boat, two little heaps lying in contact.

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

849 •

Cipriano sat behind her, his tunic removed, spreading his
white-sleeved arms on the back of his seat. The cartridge-
belt was heavy on his hips. His face was completely
expressionless, staring ahead. The wind blew his black hair
on his forehead, and blew his little beard. He met her eyes
with a far-off, remote smile, far, far down hia black eyes.
But it was a wonderful recognition of her.

The boatman in the stern sat tall and straight, watching
with pale eyes of shallow, superficial consciousness. The
great hat made his face dark, the chin-ribbon fell black
against his cheek. Feeling her look at him, he glanced
at her as if she were not there.

Turning, she pushed her cushion on to the floor and slid
down. Cipriano got up, in the running, heaving boat, and
pulled her another seat-cushion. She lay, covering her
face with her shawl, while the motor chugged rapidly, the
awning rattled with sudden wind, the hurrying waves rose
behind, giving the boat a slap and throwing her forward,
sending spray sometimes, in the heat and silence of the
lake.

Kate lost her consciousness, under her yellow shawl, in
the silence of men.

She woke to the sudden stopping of the engine, and sat

up. They were near shore; the white towers of San Pablo

among near trees. The boatman, wide-eyed, was bending

over the engine, abandoning the tiller. The waves pushed
the boat slowly round.

“ What is it? ” said Cipriano.

“More gasoline. Excellency!” said the boatman,
lhe soldiers woke and sat up.

The breeze had died.

“ The water is coming,”
" The rain ? ” said Kate.

said Cipriano.

* ^ e , s ” an< * he pointed with his fine black finger which

^beh Lrn mSid '’- Where b,ack c,ouds "«e rushing
up behind the mountains, and m another place farther off

The air se^ed risin g with strange suddenness!

flashed in ^rfn b f kmttm & together overhead. Lightning

Stmthe bn td 5 -fe S, ^ UfflCd thUDder S P° ke far

There was a smell of gasoline. The

only to stop again fa amTSt. St ” ted “ gain *

350

THE PLUMED SERPENT

The man rolled up his trousers, and, to Kate’s amaze¬
ment, stepped into the lake, though they were a mile from
the shore. The water was not up to his knees. They were
on a bank. He slowly pushed the boat before him, wading
in the silence.

“ How deep is the lake further in? ” asked Kate.

“ There, Senorita, where the birds with the white breasts
are swimming, it is eight and a half metres,” he said,
pointing as he waded.

“ We must make haste,” said Cipriano.

“ Yes, Excellency ! ”

The man stepped in again, with his long, handsome brown
legs. The motor spluttered. They were under way, run¬
ning fast. A new chill wind was springing up.

But they rounded a bend, and saw ahead the flat pro¬
montory with the dark mango-trees, and the pale yellow
upper story of the hacienda house of Jamiltepec rising above
the trees. Palm-trees stood motionless, the bougainvillea
hung in heavy sheets of magenta colour. Kate could see
huts of peons among the trees, and women washing, kneel¬
ing on stones at the lake side where the stream ran in, and
a big plantation of bananas just above.

A cool wind was spinning round in the heavens. Black
clouds were filling up. Ramon came walking slowly down
to the little harbour as they landed.

“ The water is coming,” he said in Spanish.

” We are in time,” said Cipriano.

Ramon looked them both in the face, and knew. Kate,
in her new elusiveness, laughed softly.

“ There is another flower opened in the garden of Quet-

zalcoatl,” said Cipriano in Spanish. 4

“ Under the red cannas of Huitzilopochtli,” said Ramon.

“ Yes, there, Senor,” said Cipriano. “ Pero una florecita
tan zarca ! Y abrid en mi sombra, amigo.”

“ Seis hombre de la alta fortuna.”

“ Verdad ! ” . , , .

It was about five in the afternoon. The wind hissed in
the leaves, and suddenly the rain was streaming down in a
white smoke of power. The ground was a solid white smoke

of water, the lake was gone. . , ,, ., n . . „

“ You will have to stay here to-night, said Cipriano

Veto in Spanish, in the soft, lapping Indian voice.

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

851

“ But the rain will leave off,” she said.

“ You will have to stay here,” he repeated, in the same
Spanish phrase, in a curious voice like a breath of wind.

Kate looked at Ramon, blushing. He looked back at
her, she thought, very remote, as if looking at her from
far, far away.

“ The bride of Huitzilopochtli,” he said, with a faint
smile.

“ Thou, Quetzalcoatl, thou wilt have to marry us,” said
Cipriano.

“ Do you wish it? ” said Ram6n.

** Yes ! ” she said. ** I want you to marry us, only you.”

“ When the sun goes down,” said Ram6n.

And he went away to his room. Cipriano showed Kate
to her room, then left her and went to Ram6n.

The cool water continued to come down, rushing with a
smoke of speed down from heaven.

As the twilight came through the unceasing rain, a
woman-servant brought Kate a sleeveless dress or chemise
of white linen, scalloped at the bottom and embroidered
with stiff blue flowers upside-down on the black stalks, with
two stiff green leaves. In the centre of the flowers was the
tmy Bird of Quetzalcoatl.

said the

“ The Patron asks that you put this on ! *

woman, bringing also a lamp and a little note.

The note was from Ram6n, saying in Spanish : “ Take

the dress of the bride of Huitzilopochtli, and put it on, and

take off everything but this. Leave no thread nor thing

that can touch you from the past. The past is finished.
It is the new twilight.”

Kate did not quite know how to put on the slip, for it

with 1 *? S eev ? s no l arm -holes, but was just a straight slip
with a running string. Then she remembered the old

Indian way, and tied the string over her left shoidder •

her ^mt 1PP ^ d String over her left Moulder, leaving

fnll * t Dd u art ° f her right breast bare » the slip gathered

Mrt wIt r h flow reaStS ; ^ she sighed. For it wfs but 1
shirt with flowers upturned at the bottom.

tookhe r n i’n^ r 0t i “ ^ . White clothes . came for her and
was dark 5 nce . dow ° s tairs into the garden. The zaguan

the

PS* THE PLUMED SERPENT

Ram6n took off his blouse and threw it on the stairs.
Then with naked breast he led her into the garden, into
the massive rain. Cipriano came forward, barefoot, with
naked breast, bareheaded, in the floppy white pantaloons.

They stood barefoot on the earth, that still threw back
a white smoke of waters. The rain drenched them in a
moment.

“ Barefoot on the living earth, with faces to the living
rain,” said Ram6n in Spanish, quietly; “ at twilight, be¬
tween the night and the day; man, and woman, in presence
of the unfading star, meet to be perfect in one another.
Lift your face, Caterina, and say : This man is my rain from
heaven .”

Kate lifted her face and shut her eyes in the downpour.

“ This man is my rain from heaven,” she said.

“ This woman is the earth to me—say that, Cipriano,”
said Ram6n, kneeling on one knee and laying his hand flat
on the earth.

Cipriano kneeled and laid his hand on the earth.

“ This woman is the earth to me,” he said.

“ I, woman, kiss the feet and the heels of this man, for
I will be strength to him, throughout the long twilight of
the Morning Star.”

Kate kneeled and kissed the feet and heels of Cipriano,
and said her say.

“ J f man, kiss the brow and the breast of this woman,
for I will be her peace and her increase, through the long
twilight of the Morning Star.”

Cipriano kissed her, and said his say.

Then Ram6n put Cipriano’s hand over the rain-wet eyes
Of Kate, and Kate’s hand over the rain-wet eyes of Cipriano.

“ I, a woman, beneath the darkness of this covering
hand, pray to this man to meet me in the heart of the
night, and never deny me,” said Kate. “ But let it be
an abiding place between us, for ever.”

“ I, a man, beneath the darkness of this covering hand,
pray to this woman to receive me in the heart of the night,
in the abiding place that is between us for ever.”

” Man shall betray a woman, and woman shall betray a
man,” said Ramon, “ and it shall be forgiven them, each
of them. But if they have met as earth and rain, between
day and night, in the hour of the Star; if the man has

MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL

858

met the woman with his body and the star of his hope, and
the woman has met the man with her body and the star
of her yearning, so that a meeting has come to pass, and
an abiding place for the two where they are as one star,
then shall neither of them betray the abiding place where
the meeting lives like an unsetting star. For if either

betray the abiding place of the two, it shall not be forgiven,
neither by day nor by night nor in the twilight of the
star.”

The rain was leaving off, the night was dark.

“ Go and bathe in the warm water, which is peace be¬
tween us all. And put oil on your bodies, which is the
stillness of the Morning Star. Anoint even the soles of your
feet, and the roots of your hair.”

Kate went up to her room and found a big earthenware
bath with steaming water, and big towels. Also, in a
beautiful little bowl, oil, and a soft bit of white wool.

She bathed her rain-wet body in the warm water, dried
and anointed herself with the clear oil, that was clear as
water. It was soft, and had a faint perfume, and was
grateful to the skin. She rubbed all her body, even among
her hair and under her feet, till she glowed softly.

Then she put on another of the slips with the inverted
blue flowers, that had been laid on the bed for her, and
oyer that a dress of green, hand-woven wool, made of two
pieces joined openly together down the sides, showing a

u °ij e fuU un der-dress, and fastened on the left

shoulder. There was a stiff flower, blue, on a black stem,
with two black leaves, embroidered at the bottom, at each

, A , nd h * r wh,te sli P showed a bit at the breast, and
hung below the green skirt, showing the blue flowers.

“IT. s * ra "p an< ? primitive, but beautiful. She pushed

a be t S** 1 ? PU ted ^ een Earaches. But she wanted
a belt. She tied a piece of ribbon round her waist.

A mozo tapped to say supper was ready.

S* ng 8h y»y. she went along to the salon.

WMU doth?? Cl E. n “° both waiting, in silence, in their

ove r hrslo"ideS Pnan ° ^ ^ *»"* ‘brown

HddUhffl Cipriano, coining forward. « The bride of

,n]l put on vn„’r lke i, a gr ? en mornin g. But Huitzilopochtli
WIU put on your sash, and you will put on his shoes, so that

854

THE PLUMED SERPENT

he shall never leave you, and you shall be always in his
spell.”

Cipriano tied round her waist a narrow woollen sash of
white wool, with white, terraced towers upon a red and
black ground. And she stooped and put on his small, dark
feet the huaraches of woven red strips of leather, with a
black cross on the toes.

“ One more little gift,” said Ram6n.

He made Kate put over Cipriano’s head a blue cord bear¬
ing a little symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the snake in silver and
the bird in blue turquoise. Cipriona put over her head the
same symbol, but in gold, with a bird in black dull jet, and
hanging on a red cord.

“ There ! ” said Ramdn. “ That is the symbol of Quet¬
zalcoatl, the Morning Star. Remember the marriage is the
meeting-ground, and the meeting-ground is the star. If
there be no star, no meeting-ground, no true coming together
of man with the woman, into a wholeness, there is no
marriage. And if there is no marriage, there is nothing but
an agitation. If there is no honourable meeting of man with
woman and woman with man, there is no good thing come
to pass. But if the meeting come to pass, then whosoever
betrays the abiding place, which is the meeting-ground,
which is that which lives like a star between day and night,
between the dark of woman and the dawn of man, between
man’s night and woman’s morning, shall never be forgiven,
neither here nor in the hereafter. For man is frail and
woman is frail, and none can draw the line down which
another shall walk. But the star that is between two people
and is their meeting-ground shall not be betrayed.

“ And the star that is between three people, and is their
meeting-ground, shall not be betrayed.

“ And the star that is between all men and all women,
and between all the children of men, shall not be betrayed.

“ Whosoever betrays another man, betrays a man like
himself, a fragment. For if there is no star between a man
and a man, or even a man and a wife, there is nothing.
But whosoever betrays the star that is between him and
another man, betrays all, and all is lost to the traitor.

«« Where there is no star and no abiding place 0 nothing

is, so nothing can be lost.”

CHAP : XXI. THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH.

Kate went back to her house in Sayula, and Cipriano went
back to his command in the city.

“ Will you not come with me? ” he said. “ Shall we

not make a civil marriage, and live in the same house
together? ”

“ No,” she said. “ I am married to you by Quetzalcoatl,

no other. I will be your wife in the world of Quetzalcoatl,

no other. And if the star has risen between us, we will
watch it.”

Conflicting feelings played in his dark eyes. He could
not bear even to be the least bit thwarted. Then the strong,
rather distant look came back.

“ It is very good,” he said. “ It is the best.”

And he went away without looking back.

Kate returned to her house, to her servants and her

thm,ahH^ air ; J nSlde herself she kept ver y stU1 and almost
thoughtless taking no count of time. What was going to

unfold must unfold of itself. 6 6

in W 7 T 8 " ,ear „ ed the ni g ht «. when she was shut alone
m her darkness But she feared the days a little. She
shrank so mortally from contact.

down ?o P X d l h «t r bed ^?° m window °ae morning, and looked
he lake. The sun had come, and queer blottv

a £ WS w? r ? ° n a the hllls be y° nd ‘“e water. 5 Way down
ralJh Cdge a woman was pouring water from a

assiduousIy^The^tH Statues< l ue Pfe. dipphig rapidly and

thepale^dun fake. ‘ ^ WaS ^

thfBttk Cf' 6 ^ oK at he L° P f WindoW lookin e on

where, offer“ g ht a laTfVof ^ ^

splinters of glass for tPn „ + * *I fish > charales » like

three eggs horn the rap Jh taV ° S ’ Tu a girl Was unfold »ng
them imploringly Lmard to ° Kate A "t 020 ’ thrUstin *

ttawAs*-=■=

*-* S [ssifs. tz.

856

THE PLUMED SERPENT

of drums, of tom-toms rapidly beaten. The same sound
she had heard in the distance, in the tropical dusk of Ceylon,
from the temple at sunset. The sound she had heard from
the edge of the forests in the north, when the Red Indians
were dancing by the fire. The sound that wakes dark,
ancient echoes in the heart of every man, the thud of the
primeval world.

Two drums were violently throbbing against one another.
Then gradually they were slowing down, in a peculiar un¬
even rhythm, till at last there was only left one slow, con¬
tinual, monotonous note, like a great drop of darkness
falling heavily, continually, dripping in the bright morning.

The re-evoked past is frightening, and if it be re-evoked
to overwhelm the present, it is fiendish. Kate felt a real
terror of the sound of a tom-tom. It seemed to beat straight
on her solar plexus, to make her sick.

She went to her window. Across the lane rose a tall
garden-wall of adobe brick, and above that, the sun on
the tops of the orange trees, deep gold. Beyond the orange
garden rose three tall, handsome, shaggy palm trees, side
by side on slim stems. And from the very top of the two
outer palms, rose the twin tips of the church towers. She
had noticed it so often; the two ironwork Greek crosses
seeming to stand on the mops of the palms.

Now in an instant she saw the glitter of the symbol of
Quetzalcoatl in the places where the cross had been; two
circular suns, with the dark bird at the centre. The gold
of the suns—or the serpents—flashed new in the light of the
sun, the bird lifted its wings dark in outline within the
circle.

Then again the two drums were speeding up, beating
against one another with the peculiar uneven savage rhythm,
which at first seems no rhythm, and then seems to contain
a summons almost sinister in its power, acting an the help¬
less blood direct. Kate felt her hands flutter on her wrists,
in fear. Almost, too, she could hear the heart of Cipriano
beating; her husband in Quetzalcoatl.

“ Listen, Nina ! Listen, Nina ! ” came Juana’s fright¬
ened voice from the verandah.

Kate went to the verandah. Ezequiel had rolled up his
mattress and was hitching up his pants. It was Sunday
morning, when he sometimes lay on after sunrise. His thick

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

857

black hair stood up, his dark face was blank with sleep*
but in his quiet aloofness and his slightly bowed head Kate
could see the secret satisfaction he took in the barbarous
sound of the drums.

“ It comes from the Church I ” said Juana.

Kate caught the other woman’s black, reptilian eyes
unexpectedly. Usually, she forgot that Juana was dark,
and different. For days she would not realise it. Till
suddenly she met that black, void look with the glint in it,
and she started inwardly, involuntarily asking herself :
“ Does she hate me? ”

Or was it only the unspeakable difference in blood?

Now, in the dark glitter which Juana showed her for one
moment, Kate read fear, and triumph, and a slow, savage,
nonchalant defiance. Something very inhuman.

“ What does it mean ? ” Kate said to her.

“ It means, Nina, that they won’t ring the bells any
more. They have taken the bells away, and they beat the
drums in the church. Listen 1 Listen ! ”

The drums were shuddering rapidly again.

Kate and Juana went across to the open window.

“ Look 1 Nina! The Eye of the Other One 1 No more
crosses on the church. It is the Eye of the Other One.
Look 1 How it shines ! How nice 1 ”

It means,” said Ezequiel’s breaking young voice, which
was just turning deep, “ that it is the church of Quetzal-
coatl. Now it is the temple of Quetzalcoatl; our own

brOd.

He was evidently a staunch Man of Quetzalcoatl.

Think of it I” murmured Juana, in an awed voice,
bhe seemed like a heap of darkness low at Kate’s side.

Ihen again she glanced up, and the eyes of the two
women met for a moment.

f ee , the Rina’s eyes of the sun 1 ” cried Juana, laying

° D KatC ii a I m * Kate>s eyes ^ere a sort of hazel,
chongmg, grey-gold, flickering at the moment with wonder,

A ° f and disma y- Juana sounded triumphant.

“ Whl ^ C S6rape ’ with the blue and black borders,

was d tt y & ** lifti *g bat, on which

through tr wi ndow“ t2aICOat1 ’ “ d PUSW ^ ‘ -d

The card .aid : Come to the church when you hear the

858

THE PLUMED SERPENT

one big drum; about seven o’clock.—It was signed with the
sign of Quetzalcoatl.

“ Very well!” said Kate. “ I will come.”

It was a quarter to seven already. Outside the room
was the noise of Juana sweeping the verandah. Kate put
on a white dress and a yellow hat, and a long string of pale-
coloured topaz that glimmered with yellow and mauve.

The earth was all damp with rain, the leaves were all fresh
and tropical thick, yet many old leaves were on the ground,
beaten down.

“ Nina I You are going out already ! Wait! Wait I
The coffee. Concha ! quick 1”

There was a running of bare feet, the children bringing
cup and plate and sweet buns and sugar, the mother hastily
limping with the coffee. Ezequiel came striding along the
walk, lifting his hat. He went down to the servants’

quarters.

“ Ezequiel says— I” Juana came crying. When suddenly
a soft, slack thud seemed to make a hole in the air, leaving
a gap behind it. Thud !—Thud 1—Thud !—rather slowly.
It was the big drum, irresistible.

Kate rose at once from her coffee.

“ I am going to the church,” she said.

** Yes Nina—Ezequiel says—I am coming, Nina—”

And Juana scuttled away, to get her black rebozo.

The man in the white serape with the blue and black
ends was waiting by the gate. He lifted his hat, and
walked behind Kate and Juana.

** He is following us 1” whispered Juana.

Kate drew her yellow shawl around her shoulders.

It was Sunday morning, sailing-boats lined the water’s
edge, with their black hulls. But the beach was empty.
As the great drum let fall its slow, bellowing note, the last
people were running towards the church.

In front of the church was a great throng of natives, the
men with their dark serapes, or their red blankets over their
shoulders; the nights of rain were cold; and their hats in
their hands. >The high, dark Indian heads !—Women in
blue rebozos were pressing among. The big drum slowly,
slackly exploded its note from the church-tower. Kate
had her heart in her mouth.

In the middle of the crowd, a double row of men in the

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

859

scarlet serapes of Huitzilopochtli with the black diamond
on the shoulders, stood with rifles, holding open a lane
through the crowd.

“ Pass !” said her guard to her. And Kate entered the
lane of scarlet and black serapes, going slow and dazed
between watchful black eyes of the men. Her guard
followed her. But Juana had been turned back.

Kate looked at her feet, and stumbled. Then she looked

up.

In the gateway of the yard before the church stood a
brilliant figure in a serape whose zig-zag whorls of scarlet,
white, and black ran curving, dazzling, to the black
shoulders; above which was the face of Cipriano, calm,
superb, with the little black beard and the arching brows.
He lifted his hand to her in salute.

Behind him, stretching from the gateway to the closed
door of the church, was a double row of the guard of Quetzal-
coatl, in their blankets with the blue and black borders.

“ What shall I do?” said Kate.

“ Stan <* here with me a moment,” said Cipriano, in the
gateway.

It was no easy thing to do, to face all those dark faces
glittering eyes. After all, she was a gringita, and
she felt it, A sacrifice ? Was she a sacrifice ? She hung
her head, under her yellow hat, and watched the string of
topaz twinkling and shaking its delicate, bog-watery colours
agamst her white dress. Joachim had given it her. He

? T de Up for her ’ the strin g’ “ Cornwall. So
prni M l n another world, in another life, in another

rdcal., ) ,r e a viItT m < : OQdemnCd t0 8 ° thr ° Ugh thCSe Stranee

The big drum overhead ceased, and suddenly the little
drums broke like a shower of hail on the air, and L sudde^y

: the 81,81(1 of Que “'

“Oye! Oye 1 Oye 1 Oye !”

opSeV anl’DonRam^ 1 ^ ^ ^ d °°” ° f «>e church

head 6 '} h 68 ^ 8 the Quet “>l“ at l serapef'he st^a^th^

860 THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ What is God, we shall never know ! ” he said, in a
strong voice, to all the people.

The Guard of Quetzalcoatl turned to the people, thrust¬
ing up their right arm.

“ What is God, you shall never know !” they repeated.

Then again, in the crowd, the words were re-echoed by
the Guard of Huitzilopochtli.

After which there fell a dead silence, in which Kate was
aware of a forest of black eyes glistening with white fire.

“ But the Sons of God come and go.

They come from beyond the Morning Star;

And thither they return, from the land of men.*'

It was again the solemn, powerful voice of Ramon. Kate
looked at his face; it was creamy-brown in its pallor, but
changeless in expression, and seemed to be sending a change
over the crowd, removing them from their vulgar com¬
placency.

The Guard of Quetzalcoatl turned again to the crowd,
and repeated Ramdn’s words to the crowd.

« Mary and Jesus have left you, and gone to the place
of renewal.

And Quetzalcoatl has come. He is here.

He is your lord.”

With his words, Ramon was able to put the power of his
heavy, strong will over the people. The crowd began to
fuse under his influence. As he gazed back at all the
black eyes, his eyes seemed to have no expression, save that
they seemed to be seeing the heart of all darkness in front
of him, where his unknowable God-mystery lived and
moved.

“ Those that follow me, must cross the mountains of
the sky,

And pass the houses of the stars by night.

They shall find me only in the Morning Star.

But those that will not follow, must not peep.

Peeping, they will lose their sight, and lingering, they
will fall very lame.”

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

861

He stood a moment in silence, gazing with dark browa
at the crowd. Then he dropped his arm, and turned. The
big doors of the church opened, revealing a dim interior.
Ramon entered the church alone. Inside the church, the
drum began to beat. The guard of Quetzalcoatl slowly
filed into the dim interior, the scarlet guard of Huitzilo-
pochtli filed into the yard of the church, taking the place
of the guard of Quetzalcoatl. Cipriano remained in the
gateway of the churchyard. His voice rang out clear and
military.

“ Hear me, people. You may enter the house of
Quetzalcoatl. Men must go to the right and left, and
remove their shoes, and stand erect. To the new God
no man shall kneel.

“ Women must go down the centre, and cover their faces.
And they may sit upon the floor.

“ But men must stand erect.

“ Pass now, those who dare.”

Kate went with Cipriano into the church.

It was all different, the floor was black and polished, the
walls were in stripes of colour, the place seemed dark. Two
files of the white-clad men of Quetzalcoatl stood in a long
avenue down the centre of the church.

“ This way,” said one of the men of Quetzalcoatl, in a
low voice, drawing her into the centre between the motion¬
less files of men.

She went alone and afraid over the polished black floor,
covering her face with her yellow shawl. The pillars of
the nave were dark green, like trees rising to a deep, blue
roof. The walls were vertically striped in bars of black
and white Vermillion and yellow and green, with the windows
between nch with deep blue and crimson and black glass,
having specks of light. A strange maze, the windows.

j e daylight came only from small windows, high up
under the deep blue roof, where the stripes of the walls
had run into a maze of green, like banana leaves. Below,
the church was all dark, and rich with hard colour.

XI t0 , the front » near the altar steps,

gh at the back of the chancel, above where the altar had

SfX® s “ a11 but intense bluey-white light, and

i stTM^r W “ ?* the U 6 ht stood a hugh dark figure^

Grange looming block, apparently carved in wood. Ik

362

THE PLUMED SERPENT

was a naked man, carved archaic and rather flat, holding
his right arm over his head, and on the right arm balanced
a carved wooden eagle with outspread wings whose upper
surface gleamed with gold, near the light, whose under
surface was black shadow. Round the heavy left leg of
the man-image was carved a serpent, also glimmering gold,
and its golden head rested in the hand of the figure, near
the thigh. The face of the figure was dark.

This great dark statue loomed stiff like a pillar, rather
frightening in the white-lit blue chancel.

At the foot of the statue was a stone altar with a small
fire of ocote-wood burning. And on a low throne by the
altar sat Ramon.

People were beginning to file into the church. Kate
heard the strange sound of the naked feet of the men on
the black, polished floor, the white figures stole forward
towards the altar steps, the dark faces gazing round in
wonder, men crossing themselves involuntarily. Throngs
of men slowly flooded in, and women came half running,
to crouch on the floor and cover their faces. Kate crouched
down too.

A file of the men of Quetzalcoatl came and stood along
the foot of the altar steps, like a fence with a gap in the
middle, facing the people. Beyond the gap was the flickering
altar, and Ramon.

Ram6n rose to his feet. The men of Quetzalcoatl turned
to face him, and shot up their naked right arms, in the
gesture of the statue, Ram6n lifted his arm, so his blanket
fell in towards his shoulder, revealing the naked side and
the blue sash.

“ All men salute Quetzalcoatl!” said a clear voice
in command.

The scarlet men of Huitzilopochtli were threading among
the men of the congregation, pulling the kneeling ones to
their feet, causing all to thrust up their right arm, palm
flat to heaven, face uplifted, body erect and tense. It was

the statue receiving the eagle.

So that around the low dark shrubs of the crouching
women stood a forest of erect, upthrusting men, powerful
and tense with inexplicable passion. It was a forest of
dark wrists and hands up-pressing, with the striped wall
vibrating above, and higher, the maze of green going to

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

808

the little, iron-barred windows that stood open, letting in
the light and air of the roof.

“ I am the living Quetzalcoatl,” came the solemn, im¬
passive voice of Ram6n.

I am the Son of the Morning Star, and child of the
deeps.

No man knows my Father, and I know Him not.

My Father is deep within the deeps, whence He sent me
forth.

He sends the eagle of silence down on wide wings
To lean over my head and my neck and my breast
And fill them strong with strength of wings.

He sends the serpent of power up my feet and my loins
So that strength wells up in me like water in hot springs.
But midmost shines as the Morning Star midmost shines
Between night and day, my Soul-star in one.

Which is my Father whom I know not.

I tell you, the day should not turn into glory.

And the night should not turn deep,

Save for the morning and evening stars, upon which thev
turn.

Night turns upon me, and Day, who am the star between.
Between your breast and belly is a star.

If it be not there

You are empty gourd-shells filled with dust and wind.

When you walk, the star walks with you, between your
breast and your belly. ' J

When you sleep, it softly shines.

When you speak true and true, it is bright on your lips
and your teeth. J *

When you lift your hands in courage and bravery, its glow
is dear m your palms.

Whe “ y ° u turn to y°ur wives as brave men turn to their

women ,

For ^ rn - n ^ St ^ an ? the Evenin g Star shine together.

*or man is the Morning Star. 6 '

And woman is the Star of Evening.

i tell you you are not men alone.

the star of the beyond is within you.

fe? U ,eC “ “ de8d “ an > h ° W his has g™e °ut

864

THE PLUMED SERPENT

So the star will go out of you, even as a woman will leave
a man if his warmth never warms her.

Should you say : 1 have no star; I am no star .

So it will leave you, and you will hang like a gourd on the
vine of life

With nothing but rind :

Waiting for the rats of the dark to come and gnaw your
inside.

Do you hear the rats of the darkness gnawing at your
inside ?

Till you are as empty as rat-gnawed pomegranates hanging
hollow on the Tree of Life ?

If the star shone, they dare not, they could not.

If you were men with the Morning Star.

If the star shone within you
No rat of the dark dared gnaw you.

But I am Quetzalcoatl, of the Morning Star.

I am the living Quetzalcoatl.

And you are men who should be men of the Morning Star.
See you be not rat-gnawed gourds.

I am Quetzalcoatl of the eagle and the snake.

The earth and air.

Of the Morning Star.

I am Lord of the Two Ways— 99

The drum began to beat, the men of Quetzalcoatl suddenly
took off their serapes, and Ramon did the same. They were
now men naked to the waist. The eight men from the altar-
steps filed up to the altar where the fire burned, ana one
by one kindled tall green candles, which burned with a clear
light. They ranged themselves on either side the chancel,
holding the lights high, so that the wooden face of the image
glowed as if alive, and the eyes of silver and jet flashed most

curiously. .

“ a man shall take the wine of his spirit and the blood

of his heart, the oil of his belly and the seed of his loins, and

offer them first to the Morning Star,” said Ram6n, in a loud

voice, turning to the people.

Four men came to him. One put a blue crown with the
bird on his brow, one put a red belt round his breast, another
put a yellow belt round his middle, and the last fastened
a white belt round his loins. Then the first one they

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

865

pressed a small glass bowl to Ramon’s brow, and in the
bowl was white liquid like bright water. The next touched
a bowl to the breast, and the red shook in the bowl. At
the navel the man touched a bowl with yellow fluid, and at
the loins a bowl with something dark. They held them
all to the light.

Then one by one they poured them into a silver mixing-
bowl that Ram6n held between his hands.

“ For save the Unknown God pours His Spirit over my
head and fire into my heart, and sends his power like a
fountain of oil into my belly, and His lightning like a hot
spring into my loins, I am not. I am nothing. I am a
dead gourd.

“ And save I take the wine of my spirit and the red of my
heart, the strength of my belly and the power of my loins,
and mingle them all together, and kindle them to the Morn¬
ing Star, I betray my body, I betray my soul, I betray ray
spirit and my God who is Unknown.

“ Fourfold is man. But the star is one star. And one
man is but one ptar.”

He took the silver mixing-bowl and slowly circled it
between his hands, in the act of mixing.

Then he turned his back to the people, and lifted the
bowl high up, between his hands, as if offering it to the
image.

Then suddenly he threw the contents of the bowl into the
altar fire.

There was a soft puff of explosion, a blue flame leaped
high into the air, followed by a yellow flame, and then a
rose-red smoke. In three successive instants the faces of
the men inside the chancel were lit bluish, then gold, then
dusky red. And in the same moment Ram6n had turned
to the people and shot up his hand.

“ Salute Quetzalcoatl 1” cried a voice, and men began to
thrust up their arms, when another voice came moaning
strangely : &

“ No 1 Ah no ! Ah no 1”—the voice rose in a hysterical
cry#

It came from among the crouching women, who glanced
round in fear, to see a woman in black, kneeling on the
floor, her black scarf falling back from her lifted face, thrust-
mg up her white hands to the Madonna, in the old gesture.

866

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ No ! No ! It is not permitted 1” shrieked the voice.
“ Lord ! Lord ! Lord Jesus ! Holy Virgin ! Prevent him !
Prevent him 1”

The voice sank again to a moan, the white hands
clutched the breast, and the woman in black began to work
her way forward on her knees, through the throng of women
who pressed aside to make her way, towards the altar steps.
She came with her head lowered, working her way on her
knees, and moaning low prayers of supplication.

Kate felt her blood run cold. Crouching near the altar
steps, she looked round. And she knew, by the shape of
the head bent in the black scarf, it was Carlota, creeping
along on her knees to the altar steps.

The whole church was frozen in horror. “ Saviour !
Saviour ! Jesus ! Oh Holy Virgin !” Carlota was moaning
to herself as she crawled along.

It seemed hours before she reached the altar steps. Ram6n
still stood below the great Quetzalcoatl image with arm
upflung.

Carlota crouched black at the altar steps and flung up the
white hands and her white face in the frenzy of the old way.

“ Lord 1 Lord !” she cried, in a strange ecstatic voice that
froze Kate’s bowels with horror : “ Jesus ! Jesus ! Jesus !
Jesus ! Jesus ! Jesus!”

Carlota strangled in her ecstasy. And all the while,
Ramdn, the living Quetzalcoatl, stood before the flickering
altar with naked arm upraised, looking with dark, inalterable
eyes down upon the woman.

Throes and convulsions tortured the body of Carlota. She
gazed sightlessly upwards. Then came her voice, in the
mysterious rhapsody of prayer :

“ Lord ! Lord ! Forgive !

“ God of love, forgive ! He knows not what he does.

“ Lord ! Lord Jesus ! Make an end. Make an end, Lord
of the world, Christ of the cross, make an end. Have
mercy on him, Father. Have pity on him !

“ Oh, take his life from him now, now, that his soul may

not die.”

Her voice had gathered strength till it rang out metallic
and terrible.

Almighty God, take his life from him, and save his
soul.”

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

867

And in the silence after that cry her hands seemed to
flicker in the air like flames of death.

“ The Omnipotent,” came the voice of Ram6n, speaking
quietly, as if to her, “ is with me, and I serve Omnipo¬
tence ! ”

She remained with her white clasped hands upraised, her
white arms and her white face showing mystical, like onyx,
from her thin black dress. She was absolutely rigid. And
Ram6n, with his arm too upraised, looked down on her
abstractedly, his black brows a little contracted.

A strong convulsion seized her body. She became tense
again, making inarticulate noises. Then another convulsion
seized her. Once more she recovered herself, and thrust
up her clenched hands in frenzy. A third convulsion seized
her as if from below, and she fell with a strangling moan
in a heap on the altar steps.

Kate had risen suddenly and ran to her, to lift her up.
She found her stiff, with a little froth on her discoloured
lips, and fixed, glazed eyes.

Kate looked up in consternation at Ram6n. He had
dropped his arm, and stood with his hands against his
thighs, like a statue. But he remained with his wide,
absorbed dark eyes watching without any change. He met
Kate’s glance of dismay, and his eyes quickly glanced, like
lightning, for Cipriano. Then he looked back at Carlota,
across a changeless distance. Not a muscle of his face
moved.. And Kate could see that his heart had died in its
connection with Carlota, his heart was quite, quite dead in
him; out of the deathly vacancy he watched his wife. Only
his brows frowned a little, from his smooth, male forehead.
His old connections were broken. She could hear him

sa y, There is no star between me and Carlota .—And how
terribly true it was l

Cipriano came quickly, switched off his brilliant serape,
wrapped it round the poor, stiff figure, and picking up the
burden hghtiy, walked with it through the lane of women
to the door, and out into the brilliant sun; Kate following.

Ram6n' She foUowed » she ^eard slow, deep voice of

868

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ I am the Living Quetzalcoatl.

Naked I come from out of the deep

From the place which I call my Father,

Naked have I travelled the long way round

From heaven, past the sleeping sons of God.

Out of the depths of the sky, I came like an eagle.

Out of the bowels of the earth like a snake.

All things that lift in the lift of living between earth
and sky, know me.

But I am the inward star invisible.

And the star is the lamp in the hand of the Unknown
Mover.

Beyond me is a Lord who is terrible, and wonderful,
and dark to me forever.

Yet I have lain in his loins, ere he begot me in Mother
space.

Now I am alone on earth, and this is mine.

The roots are mine, down the dark, moist path of the
snake.

And the branches are mine, in the paths of the sky and
the bird,

But the spark of me that is me is more than mine own.

And the feet of men, and the hands of the women know
me.

And knees and thighs and loins, and the bowels of
strength and seed are lit with me.

The snake of my left-hand out of the darkness is kissing
your feet with his mouth of caressive fire,

And putting his strength in your heels and ankles,
his flame in your knees and your legs and your
loins, his circle of rest in your belly.

For I am Quetzalcoatl, the feathered snake,

And I am not with you till my serpent has coiled his
circle of rest in your belly.

And I, Quetzalcoatl, the eagle of the air, am brushing
your faces with vision.

I am fanning your breasts with my breath.

And building my nest of peace in your bones.

I am Quetzalcoatl, of the Two Ways.”

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

869

Kate lingered to hear the end of this hymn. Cipriano
also had lingered in the porch, with the strange figure in
the brilliant serape in his arms. His eyes met Kate’s.
In his black glance was a sort of homage, to the mystery
of the Two Ways; a sort of secret. And Kate was uneasy.

They crossed quickly under the trees to the hotel, which
was very near, and Carlota was laid in bed. A soldier had
gone already to find a doctor; they sent also for a priest.

Kate sat by the bed. Carlota lay on the bed, making small,
horrible moaning noises. The drums outside on the church-
roof started to roll, in a savage, complicated rhythm. Kate
went to the window and looked out. People were stream¬
ing dazzled from the church.

And then, from the church-roof, came the powerful sing¬
ing of men’s voices, fanning like a dark eagle in the bright
air; a deep relentless chanting, with an undertone of
passionate assurance. She went to the window to look.
She could see the men on the church-roof, the people swarm¬
ing down below. And the roll of that relentless chanting,
with its undertone of exultance in power and life, rolled
through the air like an invisible dark presence.

Cipriano came in again, glancing at Carlota and at Kate.

“ They are singing the song of Welcome to Quetzal-
contl,” said he.

“ Is that it?” said Kate. “ What are the words?”

“ I will find you a song-sheet,” he said.

He stood beside her, putting the spell of his presence
over her. And she still struggled a little, as if she were
drowning. When she wasn’t drowning, she wanted to drown.
But when it actually came, she fought for her old footing.

There was a crying noise from Carlota. Kate hurried
to the bed.

“ Where am I?” said the white-faced, awful, deathly-
looking woman.

“ You are resting in bed,” said Kate. “ Don’t trouble.”

“ Where was I?” came Carlota’s voice.

“ Perhaps the sun gave you a touch of sunstroke,” said
Kate.

Carlota closed her eyes.

Then suddenly outside the noise of drums rolled again,
a powerful sound. And outside in the sunshine life seemed
to be rolling in powerful waves.

370

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Carlota started, and opened her eyes.

“ What is that noise?’*

“ It is a fiesta,” said Kate.

“ Ramoi^, he’s murdered me, and lost his own soul,”
said Carlota. “ He has murdered me, and lost his own
soul. He is a murderer, and one of the damned. The
man I married 1 The man I married 1 A murderer among
the damned 1”

It was evident she no longer heard the sounds outside.

Cipriano could not bear the sound of her voice. He came
quickly to the side of the bed.

“ Dona Carlota !” he said, looking down at her dulled
hazel eyes, that were fixed and unseeing : “ Do not die

with wrong words on your lips. If you are murdered, you
have murdered yourself. You were never married to
Ramon. You were married to your own way.”

He spoke fiercely, avengingly.

« Ah !” said the dying woman. “ Ah ! I never married
Ramon. No! I never married him! How could I ?
He was not what I would have him be. How could 1
marry him ? Ah ! I thought I married him. Ah 1 I am
so glad I didn’t—so glad.”

“ You are glad 1 You are glad !” said Cipriano in anger,
angry with the very ghost of the woman, talking to the
ghost. “ You are glad because you never poured the
wine of your body into the mixing-bowl! Yet in
your day you have drunk the wine of his body
and been soothed with his oil. You are glad you
kept yours back? You are glad you kept back the wine
of your body and the secret oil of your soul? That you
gave only the water of your charity ? I tell you the water
of charity, the hissing water of the spirit is bitter at last
in the mouth and in the breast and in the belly, it puts out
the fire. You would have put out the fire, Dona Carlota.
—But you cannot. You shall not. You have been charit¬
able and compassionless to the man you called your own.
So you have put out your own fire.”

“ Who is talking?” said the ghost of Carlota.

“ I, Cipriano Viedma, am talking.”

“ The oil and the wine ! The oil and the wine and the
bread ! They are the sacrament! They are the body and
the blessing of God 1 Where is the priest ? I want the

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

871

sacrament. Where is the priest? I want to confess, ami
take the sacrament, and have the peace of God,” said the
ghost of Carlota.

“ The priest is coming.—But you can take no sacrament,
unless you give it. The oil and the wine and the bread !
They are not for the priest to give. They are to be poured
into the mixing-bowl, which Ram6n calls the cup of the
star. If you pour neither oil nor wine into the mixing-
bowl, from the mixing-bowl you cannot drink. So you
have no sacrament.”

“ The sacrament! The bread !” said the ghost of Carlota.

“ There is no bread. There is no body without blood
and oil, as Shylock found out.”

** A murderer, lost among the damned!” murmured
Carlota. “ The father of my children ! The husband of
my body! Ah no 1 It is better for me to call to the Holy
Virgin, and die.”

“ Call then, and die 1 ” said Cipriano.

“ My children 1” murmured Carlota.

" It is well you must leave them. With your beggar’s
bowl of charity you have stolen their oil and their wine as
well. It is good for you to steal from them no more, you
stale virgin, you spinster, you born widow, you weeping
mother, you impeccable wife, you just woman. You 3tole
the very sunshine out of the sky and the sap out of the
earth. Because back again, what did you pour? Only
the water of dead dilution into the mixing-bowl of life, you

Oh die !—die 1—die ! Die and be a thousand times
aead Do nothing but utterly die 1” *

Dona Carlota had relapsed into unconsciousness; even
her ghost refused to hear. Cipriano flung his sinisterly-
flammg serape over his shoulders and his face, over his

bW M 1 ? n I y his black ’ entering eyes were visible as he
mew out of the room.

niW 6 i SSt by the .Y indow > and laughed a little. The
kn<^ mS 'u 6 he l lau S hed t0 herself, for she had

fi' K ,e „ 8b0Ut tbe tWO thieves on the Cross with
S’ l “ u "W’ marauding thief of the male in his own

Ihiefoft^i mUC \ m0re subtIe - cold - sly, charitaBle
b ‘'°!‘ be , Wom “ f ber , own forever chanting her

to K , h . ab ° Ut the Iove of God and the God of pity,
t Kate, too, was a modem woman and a woman in

372

THE PLUMED SERPENT

her own rights. So she sat on with Carlota. And when
the doctor came, she accepted the obsequiousness of the
man as part of her rights. And when the priest came,
she accepted the obsequiousness from him, just the same,
as part of her woman’s rights. These two ministers of
love, what were they for, but to be obsequious to her? As
for herself, she could hardly be called a thief, and a sneak-
thief of the world’s virility, when these men came forcing
their obsequiousness upon her, whining to her to take it
and relieve them of the responsibility of their own man¬
hood. No, if women are thieves, it is only because men
want to be thieved from. If women thieve the world’s
virility, it is only because men want to have it thieved,
since for men to be responsible for their own manhood
seems to be the last thing men want.

So Kate sat on in the room of the dying Carlota, smiling
a little cynically. Outside she heard the roll of the tom¬
toms and the deep chanting of the men of Quetzalcoatl.
Beyond, under the trees, in the smoothed, cleared space
before the church, she saw the half-naked men dancing in
a circle, to the drum; the round dance. Then later, danc¬
ing a religious dance of the return of Quetzalcoatl. It was
the old, barefooted, absorbed dancing of the Indians, the
dance of downward-sinking absorption. It was the dance
of these people too, just the same : the dance of the Aztecs
and Zapotecs and the Huicholes, just the same in essence,
indigenous to America; the curious, silent, absorbed dance
of the softly-beating feet and ankles, the body coming
down softly, but with deep weight, upon powerful knees
and ankles, to the tread of the earth, as when a male bird
treads the hen. And women softly stepping in unison.

And Kate, listening to the drums, and the full-throated
singing, and watching the rich, soft bodies in the dance,
thought to herself a little sceptically : Yes ! For these it
is easier. But all the white men, of the dominant race,
what are they doing at this moment?

In the afternoon there was a great dance of the Welcome
of Quetzalcoatl. Kate could only see a little of it, in front
of the church.

The drums beat vigorously all the time, the dance wound
strangely to the water’s edge. Kate heard afterwards that
the procession of women with baskets on their heads, filled

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

878

with bread and fruits all wrapped in leaves, went down to
the shore and loaded the boats. Then dancers and all got
into the boats and canoas, and rowed to the island.

They made a feast on the island, and learned the dance
of the Welcome of Quetzalcoatl, which they would dance
every year on that day. And they learned the Song of the
Welcome of Quetzalcoatl; which later on Cipriano brought
to Kate, as she sat in that dim room with the unconscious
woman, who made small, terrible, mechanical noises.

The doctor came hastening, and the priest came after
a while. Neither could do anything. They came in the
afternoon again, and Kate walked out and wandered on
the half-deserted beach, looking at the flock of boats draw¬
ing near the island, and feeling that life was a more terrible
issue even than death. One could die and have done. But
living was never done, it could never be finished, and the
responsibility could never be shifted.

She went back again to the sick-room, and with the aid
of a woman she undressed poor Carlota and put a night¬
dress on her. Another doctor came from the city. But the
sick woman was dying. And Kate was alone with her again.

The men, where were they?

The business of living? Were they really gone about
the great business of living, abandoning her here to this
business of dying ?

It was nightfall before she heard the drums returning.

And again that deep, full, almost martial singing of men,

savage and remote, to the sound of the drum. Perhaps

after all life would conquer again, and men would be men,

so that women could be women. Till men are men indeed,

women have no hope to be women. She knew that fatally
enough.

Cipriano came to her, smelling of sun and sweat, his face
darkly glowing, his eyes flashing. He glanced at the bed,
at the unconscious woman, at the medicine bottles.

tt What do they say ? ” he asked.

** ^e doctors think she may come round.**

" She will die,” he said.

Then he went with her to the window.

_.® ee * ” sa 'd. “ This is what they are singing.*’

it was the Song-sheet of the Welcome to Quetzalcoatl.

874

THE PLUMED SERPENT
Welcome to Quetzalcoatl.

We are not wasted. We are not left out.

Quetzalcoatl has come!

There is nothing more to ask for.

Quetzalcoatl has come!

He threw the Fish in the boat.

The cock rose, and crew over the waters.

The naked one climbed in.

Quetzalcoatl has come!

Quetzalcoatl loves the shade of trees.

Give him trees! Call back the trees!

We are like trees, tall and rustling.

Quetzalcoatl is among the trees.

Do not tell me my face is shining.

Quetzalcoatl has come!

Over my head his noiseless eagle
Fans a flame.

Tie my spotted shoes for dancing,

The snake has kissed my heel.

Like a volcano my hips are moving
With fire, and my throat is full.

Blue daylight sinks in my hair.

The star comes out between the two
Wonders, shines out of everywhere,

Saying without speech : Look you 1

Ah, Quetzalcoatl 1

Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.
Put star-oil over me.

Call me a man.

Even as she read, she could hear the people outside sing¬
ing it, as the reed-flutes unthreaded the melody time after
time. This strange dumb people of Mexico was opening
its voice at last. It was as if a stone had been rolled off
them all, and she heard their voice for the first time, deep,
wild, with a certain exultance and menace.

THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH

875

** The naked one climbed in.

Quetzalcoatl has come! ”

She could hear the curious defiance and exultance in the
men’s voices. Then a woman’s voice, clear almost as a
star itself, went up the road at the verse :

“ Blue daylight sinks in my hair.

The star comes out between the two
Wonders. . .

Strange ! The people had opened hearts at last. They
had rolled the stone of their heaviness away, a new world
had begun. Kate was frightened. It was dusk. She laid
her hand on Cipriano’s knee, lost. And he leaned and put
his dark hand against her cheek, breathing silently.

“ To-day,” he said softly, “ we have done well.”

She felt for his hand. All was so dark. But oh, so deep

so deep and beyond her, the vast, soft, living heat 1 So
beyond her!

** Put sleep so black as beauty in the secret of my belly.
Put star-oil over me.” *

She could almost feel her soul appealing to Cipriano for
this sacrament.

ujis kf t ide A 7 side m darkn ess, as the night fell, and
he held his hand loosely on hers. Outside, the people were

still singing. Some were dancing round the drum. On the

church-towers, where the bells had been, there were fires

flickermg and white forms of men, the noise of a heavy

nlTl ? en ag * m ’ the chant * ** the yard before the
st^f h w d t°K- a 7* W « s ? azin g, and men of Huitzilopochtli

c o5? 1 7 , the ? men ’ naked save for a breech-

6 SCar u let f . eathers on their head, dancing the
Rc.^^" danCe ’ . wh ?°P m g challenge in the firelight. S
Wff R r 6n came m his White clothes. He pulled off his
mfdenoS? 6to ^ d , lookin S down at Carlota. She no longer

the whites »dA er 7 es 7? e turned up horribl y» showing
awav closed his eyes a moment, and turned

CinriAt.ft ay ?if notbm S- He came to the window, where
Cipnano still sat in his impenetrable but living ’sUence!

376

THE PLUMED SERPENT

that satisfied where all speech had failed, holding Kate's
hand loosely. Nor did he let go her hand.

Ramon looked out, at the fires in the church towers, the
fire before the church doors, the little fires on the beach
by the lake; and the figures of men in white, the figures
of women in dark rebozos, with full white skirts, the two
naked dancers, the standing crowd, the occasional scarlet
serapes of Huitzilopochtli, the white and blue of Quetzal-
coatl, the creeping away of a motor-car, the running of boys,
the men clustering round the drum, to sing.

“ It is life,” he said, “ which is the mystery. Death
is hardly mysterious in comparison.”

There was a knocking. The doctor had come again, and
a sister to nurse the dying woman. Softly the sister paced
round the room and bent over her charge.

Cipriano and Kate went away in a boat over the dark
lake, away from all the fires and the noise, into the deep
darkness of the lake beyond, to Jamiltepec. Kate felt she
wanted to be covered with deep and living darkness, the
deeps where Cipriano could lay her.

Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.

Put star-oil over me.

And Cipriano, as he sat in the boat with her, felt the
inward sun rise darkly in him, diffusing through him; and
felt the mysterious flower of her woman’s femaleness slowly
opening to him, as a sea-anemone opens deep under the
sea, with infinite soft fleshliness. The hardness of self-will
was’ gone, and the soft anemone of her deeps blossomed for
him of itself, far down under the tides.

Ramon remained behind in the hotel, in the impenetrable
sanctuary of his own stillness. Carlota remained uncon¬
scious. There was a consultation of doctors; to no effect.
She died at dawn, before her boys could arrive from Mexico;
as a canoa was putting off from the shore with a little
breeze, and the passengers were singing the Song of Wel¬
come to Quetzalcoatl, unexpectedly, upon the pale water.

CHAP : XXn. THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI.

They buried Dona Carlota in Sayula, and Kate, though
a woman, went also to the funeral. Don Ram6n followed
the coffin, in his white clothes and big hat with the Quet-
zalcoatl sign. His boys went with him; and there were
many strangers, men, in black.

The boys looked odd young shoots, in their black suits
with short breeches and bare knees. They were both
round-faced and creamy brown in complexion, both .had
a touch of fairness. The elder, Pedro, was more like Don
Ramon; but his hair was softer, more fluffy than his
father’s, with a hint of brown. He was sulky and awkward,
and kept his head ducked. The younger boy, Cyprian, had
the fluffy, upstanding brown hair and the startled hazel
eyes of his mother.

They had come in a motor-car with their aunt, from
Guadalajara, and were returning straight to town. In her
will, the mother had named guardians in place of the father,
stating that the father would consent. And her consider¬
able fortune she had left in trust for the boys. But the
father was one of the trustees.

Ram6n sat in his room in the hotel, overlooking the lake,
and his two boys sat on the cane settee opposite him.

“ What do you want to do, my sons ? ” said Ram6n.
“To go back with your Aunt Margarita, and return to
school in the United States ? ”

The boys remained a while in sulky silence.

“ Yes ! ” said Cyprian at last, his brown hair seeming
to fluff up with indignation. “ That is what our mother
wished us to do. So, of course, we shall do it.**

Very well! ” said Ram6n quietly. “ But remember
I am your father, and my door, and my arms, and my heart
wm always be open to you, when you come.”

The elder boy shuffled with his feet, and muttered, with¬
out looking up :

** We cannot come, papal ”

"Why not, child ? ”

The boy looked up at him with brown eyes as challenging
“ his own.

877

378

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ You, papa, you call yourself The Living Quetzal-
coatl ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Rut, papa, our father is called Ram6n Carrasco.”

“ It is also true,” said Ramon, smiling.

“ We,” said Pedro, rather heavily, “ are not the children
of the Living Quetzalcoatl, papa. We are Carrasco y de
Lara.”

“ Good names both,” said Ramon.

“ Never,” said the young Cyprian, his eyes flashing,
“ never can we love you, papa. You are our enemy. You
killed our mother.”

“ No, no ! ” said Ramon. “ That you must not say.
Your mother sought her own death.”

“ Mama loved you much, much, much ! ” cried Cyprian,
the tears rising to his eyes. “ Always she loved you and
prayed for you—” He began to cry.

“ And I, my son ? ” said Ram6n.

“ You hated her and killed her! Oh, mama! Mama!
Oh, mama ! I want my mother ! ” he wept.

Come to me, little one ! ” said Ramon softly, holding
out his hands.

“ No ! ” cried Cyprian, stamping his foot and flashing
his eyes through his tears. “ No ! No ! ”

The elder boy hung his head and was crying too. Ram6n
had the little, perplexed frown of pain on his brow. He
looked from side to side, as if for some issue. Then he
gathered himself together.

“ Listen, my sons,” he said. “ You also will be men;
it will not be long. While you are little boys, you are
neither men nor women. But soon, the change will come,
and you will have to be men. And then you will know that
a man must be a man. When his soul tells him to do a
thing, he mu3t do it. When you are men, you must listen
carefully to your own souls, and be sure to be true. Be
true to your own souls; there is nothing else for a man
to do.”

“ Je m’en fiche de ton ame, mon pere ! ” said Cyprian,
with one of his flashes into French. It was a language he
often spoke with his mother.

“ That you may, my boy,” said Ram6n. “ But I may
not.”

THE LIVING HUITZELOPOCHTLI

879

“ Papa! ” put in the elder boy. “ Is your soul differ¬
ent from mama’s soul ? ”

“ Who knows ? ” said Ram6n. “ I understand it differ¬
ently.”

“ Because mama always prayed for your soul.”

“ And I, in my way, pray for hers, child. If her soul
comes back to me, I will take it into my heart.”

“ Mama’s soul,” said Cyprian, “ will go straight into
Paradise.”

“ Who knows, child ! Perhaps the Paradise for the souls
of the dead is the hearts of the living.”

“ I don’t understand what you say.”

“ It is possible,” said Ram6n, “ that even now the only
Paradise for the soul of your mother is in my heart.”

The two boys stared at him with open eyes.

“ Never will I believe that,” said Cyprian.

“ Or it may be in thy heart,” said Ram6n. “ Hast thou
a place in thy heart for the soul of thy mother?”

The young Cyprian stared with bewildered hazel eyes.

“ The soul of my mother goes direct to Paradise, because
she is a saint,” he asserted flatly.

“ Which Paradise, my son ? ”

“ The only one. Where God is.”

“ And where is that? ”

There was a pause.

“ In the sky,” said Cyprian* stubbornly.

“ It; ^ very far and very empty. But I believe, my son,
that the hearts of living men are the very middle of the
8 *y* . there God is; and Paradise; inside the hearts
of living men and women. And there the souls of the dead
come to rest, there, at the very centre, where the blood
turns and returns; that is where the dead sleep best.”

There was a very blank pause.

“ And wilt thou go on saying thou art the Living Quet-
zalcoatl ? ” said Cyprian. °

“ Surely! And when you are a little older, perhaps
you will come to me and say it too.”

1 T, 7 ? h ° U hast kiUed our mother > and we shall
nate thee. When we are men we ought to kill thee.”

" a y» that “ bombast, child 1 Why wilt thou listen
only to servants and priests and people of that sort? Are
ney not thy inferiors, since thou art my son, and thy

380

THE PLUMED SERPENT

mother’s son ? Why dost thou take the talk of servants
and inferiors into thy mouth ? Hast thou no room for the
speech of brave men ? Thou wilt not kill me, neither will
thy brother. For I would not allow you, even if you
wished it. And you do not wish it. Talk no more of this
empty lackey-talk to me, Cyprian, for I will not hear it.
Art thou already a little lackey, or a priest ? Come, thou
art vulgar. Thou art a little vulgarian. We had better
speak English; or thy French. Castilian is too good a
language to turn into this currish talk.”

Ramon rose and went to the window to look out at the
lake. The drums on the church were sounding for midday,
when every man should glance at the sun, and stand silent
with a little prayer.

“ The sun has climbed the hill, the day is on the downward
slope.

Between the morning and the afternoon, stand I here with
my soul, and lift it up.

My soul is heavy with sunshine, and steeped with strength.

The sunbeams have filled me like a honeycomb,

It is the moment of fulness,

And the top of the morning.”

Ram6n turned and repeated the Mid-day verse to his
boys. They listened in confused silence.

“ Come 1 ” he said. “ Why are you confused ? If I
talked to you about your new boots, or ten pesos, you
would not be confused. But if I speak of the sun and
your own souls filled from the sun like honeycombs, you
sulk. You had better go back to your school in America,
to learn to be business men. You had better say to every¬
body : Oh, no ! we have no father! Our mother died,
but we never had a father. We are children of an
immaculate conception, so we should make excellent busi¬
ness men.”

“ I shall be a priest,” said Cyprian.

“ And I a doctor,” said Pedro.

** Very good ! Very good ! Shall-be is far from qtti , and
to-morrow is another day. Come to me when your heart
tells you to come. You are my little boys, whatever you

THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI

881

say, and I shall stroke your hair and laugh at you. Come!
Come here! ”

He looked at them, and they dared not refuse to obey,
his power was so much greater than theirs.

He took his eldest son in his arms and stroked his head.

“ There ! ” he said. “ Thou art my eldest son, and I
am thy father, who calls himself The Living Quetzalcoatl.
When they say : * Is it thy father who calls himself The
Living Quetzalcoatl ? ’—say to them : ‘ Yes, he is my
father.* And when they ask you what you think of such
a father, say : ‘ I am young, and I do not understand him
yet. But I do not judge my father without understanding
him.’ Wilt thou say that, my boy, Pedro, my son ? ” And
Ram6n stroked the boy’s hair with the gentleness and
tenderness which filled the child with a sort of awe.

Yes, papa ! I will say that,” said the boy, relieved.

It is well,” said Ram6n, laying his hand on the child’s
head for a moment, like a blessing.

Then he turned to the younger son.

“ Come then,” he said, “ and let me stroke thy up¬
standing hair.”

<«

“ If I love thee, I cannot love mama 1 ” said Cyprian.

“ Nay, is thy heart so narrow ? Love not at all, if it
makes thee petty.”

“ But I do not want to come to thee, papa.”

“ Then stay away, my son, and come when thou dost
want it.”

“ I do not think thou lovest me, papa.”

“ Nay, when thou art an obstinate monkey, I love thee
not. But when thy real manhood comes upon thee, and
thou art brave and daring, rather than rash and impudent,
then thou wilt be lovable. How can I love thee if thou
art not lovable ? ”

“ Mama always loved me.”

She called thee her own. I do not call thee mine
own. Thou art thyself. When thou art lovable, I can
love thee. When thou art rash and impudent, nay, I
cammt. The mill will not spin when the wind does not

The boys went away. Ram6n watched them as they
stood in their black clothes and bare knees upon the jetty,
and his heart yearned over them.

382 THE PLUMED SERPENT

“Ah, the poor little devils ! ” he said to himself. And
then :

“ But I can do no more than keep my soul like a castle
for them, to be a stronghold to them when they need it—
if ever they do.”

These days Kate often sat by the lake shore, in the early
light of the morning. Between the rains, the day came
very clear, she could see every wrinkle in the great hillr
opposite, and the fold, or p§ss, through which a river came,
away at Tuliapan, was so vivid to her she felt she had
walked it. The red birds looked as if rains had freshened
even their poppy-buds, and in the morning frogs were
whirring.

But the world was somehow different; all different. No
jingle of bells from the church, no striking of the clock.
The clock was taken away.

And instead, the drums. At dawn, the heavy drum
rolling its sound on the air. Then the sound of the Dawn-
Verse chanted from the tower, in a strong man’s voice :

“ The dark is dividing, the sun is coming past the wall.
Day is at hand.

Lift your hand, say Farewell! say Welcome !

Then be silent.

Let the darkness leave you, let the light come into you,
Man in the twilight.”

The voice, and the great drum ceased. And in the dawn
the men who had risen stood silent, with arm uplifted, in
the moment of change, the women covered their faces
and bent their heads. All was changeless still for the
moment of change.

Then the light drum rattled swiftly, as the first sparkle
of the bright sun flashed in sheer light from the crest of
the great hills. The day had begun. People of the world
moved on their way.

At about nine o’clock the light drum rattled quickly,
and the voice in the tower cried :

“ Half way ! Half way up the slope of the morning ! ”
There was the heavy drum at noon, the light drum again
at about three o’clock, with the cry :

“ Half way 1 Half way down the slope of afternoon.”

THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI 888

And at sunset again, the great drum rolling, anu vne
voice crying :

“ Leave off ! Leave off ! Leave off !

Lift your hand, say Farewell! say Welcome!

Man in the twilight.

The sun is in the outer porch, cry to him : Thanks I Oh,
Thanks!

Then be silent.

You belong to the night.”

And again in the sunset everywhere men stood with lifted
faces and hand, and women covered their faces and stood
with bowed heads, all was changeless still for the moment
of change.

Then the lighter drums suddenly beat, and people moved
on into the night.

The world was different, different. The drums seemed
to leave the air soft and vulnerable, as if % it were alive.
Above all, no clang of metal on metal, during the moments
of change.

‘‘ Metal for resistance.

Drums for the beating heart.
The heart ceases not.”

This was one of Ramdn’s little verses.

Strange, the change that was taking place in the world.
Always the air had a softer, more velvety silence, it seemed
aive. And there were no hours. Dawn and noon and
sunset, mid-moming, or the up-slope middle, and mid-
atternoon, or the down-slope middle, this was the day, with

, the ? ight * The y be S an ^ call the four
watches of the day the watch of the rabbit, the watch of

nf tbe w atch of the turkey-buzzard and the watch

watch th u f0Ur <l uarters of the night were the

the fishM hC °A th , G " atch of the fire ' fl y» watch of

the d ~ me * or ™*e Cipriano to her, “ when

T , r 18 thrusting his last foot towards the forest.”

of th^ t i neant * sbe knew > “l the last quarter of the hours
ot the deer; «omethmg after five o’clock.

THE PLUMED SERPENT

884

It was as if, from Ramon and Cipriano, from Jamfltepec
and the lake region, a new world was unfolding, unrolling,
as softly and subtly as twilight falling and removing the
clutter of day. It was a soft, twilit newness slowly spread¬
ing and penetrating the world, even into the cities. Now,
even in the cities the blue serapes of Quetzalcoatl were
seen, and the drums were heard at the Hours, casting a
strange mesh of twilight over the clash of bells and the
clash of traffic. Even in the capital the big drum rolled
again, and men, even men in city clothes, would stand
still with uplifted faces and arm upstretched, listening for
the noon-verse, which they knew in their hearts, and trying
not to hear the clash of metal.

** Metal for resistance.

Drums for the beating heart.”

But it was a world of metal, and a world of resistance.
Cipriano, strangely powerful with the soldiers, in spite of
the hatred he aroused in other officials, was for meeting
metal with metal. For getting Montes to declare : The
Religion of Quetzalcoatl is the religion of Mexico, official
and declared.—Then backing up the declaration with the
army.

But no ! no ! said Ram6n. Let it spread of itself. And
wait awhile, till you can be declared the living Huitzilo-
pochtli, and your men can have the red and black blanket,
with the snake-curve. Then perhaps we can have the open
wedding with Caterina, and she will be a mother among
the gods.

All the time, Ram6n tried as far as possible to avoid
arousing resistance and hate. He wrote open letters to
the clergy, saying :

** Who am I, that I should be enemy of the One Church r
I am catholic of catholics. I would have One Church of
all the world, with Rome for the Central City, if Rome

wish. .

“ But different peoples must have different Saviours, as

they have different speech and different colour. The final
mystery is one mystery. But the manifestations are many.

“ God must come to Mexico in a blanket and in huar-
aches, else He is no God of the Mexicans, they cannot

THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI

385

know Him. Naked, all men are but men. But the touch,
the look, the word that goes from one naked man to another
is the mystery of living. We live by manifestations.

“ And men are fragile, and fragments, and strangely
grouped in their fragmentariness. The invisible God has
done it to us, darkened some faces and whitened others,
and grouped us in groups, even as the zopilote is a bird,
and the parrot of the hot lands is a bird, and the little
oriole is a bird. But the angel of the zopilotes must be a
zopilote, and the angel of the parrots a parrot. Amd to
one, the dead carcase will ever smell good; to the other,
the fruit.

“ Priests who will come to me do not forsalce either

faith or God. They change their manner of speech and

vestments, as the peon calls with one cry to the oxen, and

with another cry to the mules. Each responds to its own
cal] in its own way —**

socialists and agitators he wrote :

What do you want? Would you make all men a 9
you are f And when every peon in Mexico wears an Ameri¬
can suit of clothes and shiny black shoes, and looks for

J~ e “ new spaper and for his manhood to the govern-
ment, will you be satisfied? Did the government, then,

th y °th y °V manhood » that y° u expect it to give it to

and m f ° rget * lt is time P ut awa y the grudge

and VP* 17 * N -° T D Was eVer the better for being P^ed,
nd S *** man 1S tbe worse lor a grudge.

«, t! Can d< ! n , othin g with We, except five it.

found it U | 8 ,f 8eCk -i lfC , Wher , e !t is to be found ‘ And ’ having
V • W1 ! *°l ve the problems. But every time we

ten nrobl 1Vm f We, . m ° rder to solve a problem, we cause
the £52 em8 ? T mg Up Where was on * before. Solving

ousjorest of proW e e m P ;.° Ple ’ we '° Se the pe0 P le to a
probkm Sr' K OUl | ds ’ and chan e es the Problem. The

S^nothinp Ln K yS ^ t ? ere ’ and Wil1 a,wa y g be different,
dissolves f J “ b f solved * even by life and living, for life
« m, and resolves, solving it leaves alone.

sun and r th^ r tf WC tU ™. ? Ufe; and from the clock to the
u 55. e stars » and from metal to membrane.

s Way ho P e the Problem will dissolve, since it

886

THE PLUMED SERPENT

can never be solved. When men seek life first, they will not
seek land nor gold. The lands will lie on the lap of the
gods, where men lie. And if the old communal system
comes back, and the village and the land are one, it will
be very good. For truly, no man can possess lands.

“ But when we are deep in a bog, it is no use attempting
to gallop. We can only wade out with toil. And in our
haste to have a child, it is no good tearing the babe from
the womb.

“ Seek life, and life will bring the change.

“ Seek life itself, even pause at dawn and at sunset, and
life will come back into us and prompt us through the
transitions.

“ Lay forcible hands on nothing, only be ready to resist,
if forcible hands should be laid on you. For the new shoots
of life are tender, and better ten deaths than that they
should be torn or trampled down by the bullies of the
world. When it comes to fighting for the tender shoots of
life, fight as the jaguar fights for her young, as the she-bear
for her cubs.

“ That which is life is vulnerable, only metal is invulner¬
able. Fight for the vulnerable unfolding of life. But for
that, fight never to yield.”

Cipriano, too, was always speaking to his soldiers, always
with the same cry :

“ We are men 1 We are fighters 1

“ But what can we do?

“ Shall we march to simple death ?

** No ! No 1 We must march to life.

“ The gringos are here. We have let them come. We
must let them stay, for we cannot drive them out. With
guns and swords and bayonets we can never drive them
out, for they have a thousand where we have one. And
if they come in peace, let them stay in peace.

“ But we have not lost Mexico yet. We have not lost
each other.

“ We are the blood of America. We are the blood of
Montezuma.

“ What is my hand for? Is it to turn the handle of

machine alone ? . ,

“My hand is to salute the God of Mexicans, beyond

tie sky.

THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI

887

“ My hand is to touch the hand of a brave man.

“ My hand is to hold a gun.

“ My hand is to make the corn grow out of the ground.
“ What are my knees for?

“ My knees are to hold me proud and erect.

“ My knees are for marching on my wuy.

“ My knees are the knees of a man.

“ Our god is Quetzalcoatl of the blue sky, and Huitzilo-
P°chtli red at the gates, watching.

“ Our gods hate a kneeling man. They shout Ilo! Erectl
“ Then what can we do?

“ Wait 1

|| I am a man, naked inside my clothes as you are.

Am l a big man? Am I a tall and powerful man, from
lJascala, for example?

I am not. I am little. I am from the south. I am
small—

“ Yet am I not your general?
“Why?

J -

“ 1 a general, and you only soldiers?

I will tell you.

|| I found the other strength.

.“ T !', e ' c , are two strengths; the strength which is the

and T a “ d mules and iron - of machines and guns,

and of men who cannot get the second strength.

von want a V 5 the SeC0 " d Etren 8 th - 11 « ‘he strength
b“g It u th 7° U 8 et il - whether y° u “re small or

A?d von can a tT* * fr ° m behind the Sun -

breast ‘‘ H n/> “* y° u . can 8<* il here I ”-he struck his
a . , , d here 1 — he struck his belly—“ and here I ’>

of the sun ” “ The StreDgth that c omes from back

as V if’ e dark P Ie a a n t 0 heTf “ S eyeS flashed ’ and !t was

him out nf , . atbe rs. hke pinions, were starting out of

cCh^ and flash H aDd baCk> BS if these dark Pinions
to ..a- , hed llke a r °used eagle. His men seemed

and'dashbi’e of Win'Tk Sight A w!th tbe d cmonish clashing
their eye flashing f * ^ “ ° Id god ‘ And ‘ b *y murmured!

hi.7hilLn P * ian0 ‘ U “ he ' We “ e Ciprianistos, we are
“ We are men! We

are men 1 ” cried Cipriano.

888

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ But listen. There are two kinds of men. There are
men with the second strength, and men without it.

“ When the first gringos came, we lost our second
strength. And the padres taught us : Submit 1 Submit!

“The gringos had got the second strength !

“ How ?

“ Like cunning ones, they stole it on the sly. They kept
very still, like a tarantula in his hole. Then when neither
sun nor moon nor stars knew he was there, Biff 1—the
tarantula sprang across, and bit, and left the poison and
sucked the secret.

“ So they got the secrets of the air and the water, and
they got the secrets out of the earth. So the metals were
theirs, and they made guns and machines and ships, and
they made trains and telegrams and radio.

“ Why? Why did they make all these things? How
could they do it ?

“ Because, by cunning, they had got the secret of the
second strength, which comes from behind the sun.

“ And we had to be slaves, because we had only got the
first strength, we had lost the second strength.

“ Now we are getting it back. We have found our way
again to the secret sun behind the sun. There sat Quet-
zalcoatl, and at last Don Ram6n found him. There sits
the red Huitzilopochtli, and 1 have found him. For I have
found the second strength.

“ When he comes, all you who strive shall find the second
strength.

“ And when you have it, where will you feel it?

“ Not here ! ”—and he struck his forehead. “ Not where
the cunning gringos have it, in the head, and in their books.
Not we. We are men, we are not spiders.

“ We shall have it here ! ”—he struck his breast—“ and
here ! ”—he struck his belly—“ and here ! ”—he struck his

loins.

“ Are we men ? Can we not get the second strength ?
Can we not? Have we lost it forever?

“ I say no I Quetzalcoatl is among us. I have found the
red Huitzilopochtli. The second strength 1

“ When you walk or sit, when you work or lie down,
when you eat or sleep, think of the second strength, that
you must have it.

THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI

889

“ Be very quiet. It is shy as a bird in a dark tree.

“ Be very clean, clean in your bodies and your clothes.
It is like a star, that will not shine in dirt.

“ Be very brave, and do not drink till you are drunk,
nor soil yourself with bad women, nor steal. Because a
drunken man has lost his second strength, and a man loses
his strength in bad women, and a thief is a coward, and the
red Huitzilopochtli hates a coward.

“ Try ! Try for the second strength. When we have it,
the otheri will lose it.”

Cipriano struggled hard with his army. The curse of any
army is the having nothing to do. Cipriano made all his
men cook and wash for themselves, clean and paint the
barracks, make a great garden to grow vegetables, and
plant trees wherever there was water. And he himself took
a passionate interest in what they did. A dirty tunic, a
sore foot, a badly-made huarache did not escape him. But
even when they cooked their meals he went among them.

“ Give me something to eat,” he would say. “ Give me
an enchilada ! ”

Then he praised the cooking, or said it was bad.

Like all savages, they liked doing small things. And,
like most Mexicans, once they were a little sure of what
they were doing, they loved doing it well.

Cipriano was determined to get some discipline into them.
Discipline is what Mexico needs, and what the whole world
needs. But it is the discipline from the inside that matters.

w TtT discipline, from the outside, breaks down.
tie had the wild Indians from the north beat their drums
m the barracks-yard, and start the old dances again. The

ittpif 6 ’ mu da ^ e T w ^. ich h *s meaning, i s a deep discipline in
itself. The old Indians of the north still have the secret

ov They dance to gain power; power

d«nn the lwi !^. foTces or potencies of the earth. And these
endian Deed mtense dark concentration, and immense

]pnT J^ a . n ,° en couraged the dances more than anything. He
spe^ ^ th curious Passion. The shield and

surnrifj a * the kn l fe da nce, the dance of ambush and the
th?hnrth daDC !i* u C !f araed them in the savage villages of
the dan ^ ed them 111 the barracks-yard, by

nfire, at night, when the great doors were shut.

890

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Then, naked save for a black breech-cloth, his body
smeared with oil and red earth-powder, he would face some
heavy naked Indian and with shield and spear dance the
dance of the two warriors, champions in the midst of the
dense ring of soldiers. And the silent, rhythmic concen¬
tration of this duel in subtlety and rapidity kept the feet
softly beating with the drum, the naked body suave and
subtle, circling with sauve, primitive stealth, then crouch¬
ing and leaping like a panther, with the spear poised, to a
clash of shields, parting again with the crowing yell of
defiance and exultance.

In this dance, no one was more suave and sudden than
Cipriano. He could swerve along the ground with bent,
naked back, as invisible as a lynx, circling round his
opponent, his feet beating and his suave body subtly lilting
to the drum. Then in a flash he was in the air, his spear
pointing down at the collar-bone of his enemy and gliding
over his shoulder, as the opponent swerved under, and the
war-yell resounded. The soldiers in the deep circle watched,
fascinated, uttering the old low cries.

And as the dance went on, Cipriano felt his strength
increase and surge inside him. When all his limbs were
glistening with sweat, and his spirit was at last satisfied,
he was at once tired and surcharged with extraordinary
power. Then he would throw his scarlet and dark sarape
around him, and motion other men to fight, giving his
spear and shield to another officer or soldier, going himself
to sit down on the ground and watch, by the firelight. And
then he felt his limbs and his whole body immense with
power, he felt the black mystery of power go out of him
over all his soldiers. And he sat there imperturbable, m
silence, holding all those black-eyed men in the splendour
of his own, silent self. His own dark consciousness seemed
to radiate through their flesh and their bones, they were
conscious, not through themselves but through him. And
as a man’s instinct is to shield his own head, so that instinct
was to shield Cipriano, for he was the most precious part of
themselves to them. It was in him they were supreme.
They got their splendour from his power and their greatest
consciousness was his consciousness diffusing them.

“ I am not of myself,” he would say to them. I am
of the red Huitzilopochtli and the power from behmd the

THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI

801

sun. And you are not of yourselves. Of yourselves you
are nothing. You are of me, my men.”

He encouraged them to dance naked, with the breech-
cloth, to rub themselves with the red earth-powder, over
the oil.

“ This is the oil of the stars. Rub it well into your limbs
and you will be strong as the starry sky. This is the red
blood of volcanos. Rub yourselves with it, you will have
the power of the fire of the volcanoes, from the centre of
the earth.”

He encouraged them to dance the silent, concentrated
dances to the drum, to dance for hours, gathering power and
strength.

“ If you know how to tread the dance, you can tread
deeper and deeper till you touch the middle of the earth
with your foot. And when you touch the middle of the
earth, you will have such power in your belly and your
breast, no man will be able to overcome you. Get the
second strength. Get it, get it out of the earth, get it from
behind the sun. Get the second strength.”

He made long, rapid marches across the wild Mexican
country, and through the mountains, moving light and
swift. He liked to have his men camping in the open, with
no tents : but the watch set, and the stars overhead. He
pursued the bandits with swift movements. He stripped
his captives and tied them up. But if it seemed a brave
man, he would swear him in. If it seemed to him a knave,
a ^reacnerous cur, he stabbed him to the heart, saying :

1 am the red Huitzilopochtli, of the knife.”

Already he had got his own small, picked body of men
out of the ignominous drab uniform, dressed in white with
tne scarlet sash and the scarlet ankle cords, and carrying
he good, red and black sarape. And his men must be clean,
n the march they would stop by some river, with the order
M every man to strip and wash, and wash his clothing.

ui* n ? en ’. dark and ruddy, moved about naked, while
the white clothing of strong white cotton dried on the earth.

o&° Ve , d ° n a ? ain ’ g ,itterin g ™th the peculiar whiteness
smafl n" * lothc * ™ Mexico, gun at their backs, sarape and

with aCk T the,r backs ’ rearing the heavy straw hats
<rJn! e scar,et crowns on their heads.

They must move 1 ” he said to his officers. “ They

892

THE PLUMED SERPENT

must learn again to move swiftly and untiringly, with the
old power. They must not lie about. In the sleep hours, let
them sleep. In the waking, let them work, or march, or
drill, or dance.”

He divided his regiment up into little companies of a
hundred each, with a centurion and a sergeant in command.
Each company of a hundred must learn to act in perfect
unison, freely and flexibly. “ Perfect your hundred,”
Cipriano insisted, “ and I will perfect your thousands and
your tens of thousands.”

“ Listen ! ” he said. “ For us, no trench and cannon
warfare. My men are no cannon-fodder, nor trench-dung.
Where cannon are, we move away. Our hundreds break
up, and we attack where the cannon are not. That we are
swift, that we are silent, that we have no burdens, and that
the second strength is in us : that is all. We intend to put
up no battle-front, but to attack at our own moment, and at
a thousand points.”

And always he reiterated :

“ If you can get the power from the heart of the earth,
and the power from behind the sun ; if you can summon
the power of the red Huitzilopochtli into you, nobody can
conquer you. Get the second strength.”

Ram6n was pressing Cipriano now openly to assume the
living Huitzilopochtli.

“ Come ! ” he said. “ It is time you let General Viedma
be swallowed up in the red Huitzilopochtli. Don’t you

think ? ” ...

“ If I know what it means,” said Cipriano.

They were sitting on the mats in Ramon’s room, in the
heat before the rain came, towards the end of the rainy
season.

“ Stand up ! ” said Ramon.

Cipriano stood up at once, with that soft, startling alert¬
ness in his movement.

Ram6n came quickly to him, placed one of his hands
over Cipriano’s eyes, closing them. Ramon stood behind
Cipriano, who remained motionless in the warm dark, his
consciousness reeling in strange concentric waves, towards
a centre where it suddenly plunges into the bottomless

deeps, like sleep.

“ Cipriano? ”—the voice sounded so far on.

THE LIVING HUITZtLOPOCHTLJ

S08

« Yes.”

“ Is it dark ? ”

“ It is dark.”

“ Is it alive? Is the darkness alive? ”
“ Surely it is alive.”

“ Who lives ? ”

n

I.

99

i <

“ Where? ”

“ I know not. In the living darkness.”

Ramon then bound Cipriano’s eyes and head with a strip
of black fur. Then again, with a warm, soft pressure, he
pressed one naked hand over Cipriano’s naked breast, and
one between his shoulders. Cipriano stood in profound
darkness, erect and silent.

“ Cipriano? ”

“ Yes.”

Is it dark in your heart ? ”

It is coming dark.”

Ram6n felt the thud of the man’s heart slowly slacken¬
ing. In Cipriano, another circle of darkness had started
slowly to revolve, from his heart. It swung in widening
rounds, like a greater sleep.

“ Is it dark ? ”

“ It is dark.”

** Who lives ? ”

“ I.”

b ? UI ! d Cipriano’s arms at his sides, with a belt
h !u bre ? 5t ‘ Then he P ul his one hand over

back nri;J" S ° tb £ r ^ and m the smaI1 ot the °‘her man’s

<« ~ p ? ss,n f , with slow > warm, powerful pressure.

Upriano? ”

“ Yes.”

VZ ^dark"? 1 ’’ 116 aDSWer goblg farther and ' orther a way.

“No, my Lord.”

his arms close round Cipriano’s
began to Si 8 h '% b * a . ck h . ead a g inst hi s side. And Cipriano

in the darknl« S rl hlS mm ?’. his head were “eltingaway
of sleep bePan ; • * ****' “ black wine ’ the other circle

head U V ?’ vast ‘ And he was a “an without a
waters 8 ^ a d “ k Wmd over the lace of the dark

3‘.)4

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Is it perfect ? ”
“ It is perfect.”
“ Who lives? ”

“ Who—1 ”

Cipriano no longer knew.

Ramon bound him fast round the middle, then, pressing
his head against the hip, folded the arms round Cipriano’s
loins, closing with his hands the secret places.

“ Cipriano ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Is it all dark ? ”

But Cipriano could not answer. The last circle was
sweeping round, and the breath upon the waters was sinking
into the waters, there was no more utterance. Ram6n
kneeled with pressed head and arms and hands, for some
moments still. Then he bound the loins, binding the wrists
to the hips.

Cipriano stood rigid and motionless. Ram6n clasped the
two knees with his hands, till they were warm, and he felt
them dark and asleep like two living stones, or two eggs.
Then swiftly he bound them together, and grasped the
ankles, as one might grasp the base of a young tree as it
emerges from the earth. Crouching on the earth, he gripped
them in an intense grip, resting his head on the feet. The
moments passed, and both men were unconscious.

Then Ramon bound the ankles, lifted Cipriano suddenly,
with a sleep-moving softness, laid him on the skin of a big
mountain-lion, which was spread upon the blankets, threw
over him the red and black sarape of Huitzilopochth, and
lay down at his feet, holding Cipriano’s feet to his own

abdomen. . , . .

And both men passed into perfect unconsciousness,

Cipriano within the womb of undisturbed creation, Ram6n

in the death sleep. , , , , t*

How long they were both dark, they never knew. _ It

was twilight. Ram6n was suddenly aroused by the jerking

of Cipriano’s feet. He sat up, and took the blanket off

Cipriano’s face. .

“ Is it night? ” said Cipriano.

“ Almost night,” said Ram6n.

Silence followed, while Ram6n unfastened the bonds, be¬
ginning at the feet. Before he unbound the eyes, he closed

THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI

895

the window, so the room was almost dark. Then he un¬
fastened the last binding, and Cipriano sat up, looking,
then suddenly covering his eyes.

44 Make it quite dark 1 ” he said.

Ram6n closed the shutters, and the room was complete
night. Then he returned and sat on the mats by Cipriano.
Cipriano was asleep again. After a while, Ramon left him.

He did not see him again till dawn. Then Ram6n found
him going down to the lake, to swim. The two men swam
together, while the sun rose. With the rain, the lake was
colder. They went to the house to rub oil in their limbs.

Cipriano looked at Ram6n with black eyes which seemed
to be looking at all space.

44 I went far,’* he said.

44 To where there is no beyond? ” said Ram6n.

44 Yes, there.”

And in a moment or two, Cipriano was wrapped in his
blanket again, and asleep.

He did not wake till the afternoon. Then he ate, and
took a boat, and rowed down the lake to Kate. He found
her at home. She was surprised to see him, in his white
clothes and with his sarape of Huitzilopochtli.

44 I am going to be the living Hutzilopochtli,” he said.

Are you? When? Does it feel queer? ”—Kate was
afraid of his eyes, they seemed inhuman.

“ On Thursday. The day of Huitzilopochtli is to be
lhursday. Won’t you sit beside me, and be wife of me
when I am a god ? ”

“But do you feel you are a god ? ” she asked, querulous.

He turned his eyes on her strangely.

I have been,” he said. 44 And I have come back. But
1 Delong there, where I went.”

44 Where ? ”

*kere is no beyond, and the darkness sinks into

«* TSj 1 »»’ wakin g and sleeping are one thing.”

. K . JNo * ® aid Kate * afraid. 44 I never understood mystical
things. They make me uneasy.”

Is it mystical when I come in to you ? ”

No,” said Kate. 44 Surely that is physical.”

of Hi,W he further * Won, t you be the bride

* lopochtll? he asked again.

Not so soon,” said Kate.

U

If

396

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Not so soon ! ” he re-echoed.

There was a pause.

“ Will you come back with me to Jamiltepec now? ” he
asked.

“ Not now,” she said.

“ Why not now ? ”

“ Oh, I don’t know.—You treat me as if I had no life
of my own,” she said. “ But I have.”

“ A life of your own? Who gave it you? Where did
you get it? ”

“ I don’t know. But I have got it. And I must live it.
I can’t be just swallowed up.”

“ Why, Malintzi? ” he said, giving her a name. “ Why
can’t you ? ”

“Be just swallowed up?” she said. “Well, I just
can’t.”

“ I am the living Huitzilopochtli,” he said. “ And 1
am swallowed up. I thought, so could you be, Malintzi.”
“ No 1 Not quite? ” she said.

“ Not quite ! Not quite ! Not now 1 Not just now !
How often you say Not, to-day!—I must go back to
Ramon.”

“ Yes. Go back to him. You only care about him,
and your living Quetzalcoatl and your living Huitzilopochtli.
—I am only a woman.”

“ No, Malintzi, you are more. You are more than Kate,
you are Malintzi.”

“ I am not ! I am only Kate, and I am only a woman.

I mistrust all that other stuff.”

“ I am more than just a man, Malintzi.—Don’t you see

“ No 1 ” said Kate. “ I don’t see it. Why should you

be more than just a man ? ”

“ Because I am the living Huitzilopochtli. Didn’t I tell
you? You’ve got dust in your mouth to-day, Malintzi.”

He went away, leaving her rocking in anger on her
terrace, in love again with her old self, and hostile to the
new thing. She was thinking of London and Paris and

New York, and all the people there.

“ Oh ! ” she cried to herself, stifling. “ For heaven s
sake let me get out of this, and back to simple human
people. I loathe the very sound of Quetzalcoatl and Hint-

THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI

397

zilopochtli. I would die rather than be mixed up in it any
more. Horrible, really, both Ramon and Cipriano. And
they want to put it over me, with their high-flown bunk,
and their Malintzi. Malintzi! I am Kate Forrester, really.
I am neither Kate Leslie nor Kate Tylor. I am sick of
these men putting names over me. I was born Kate
Forrester, and I shall die Kate Forrester. I want to go
home. Loathsome, really, to be called Malintzi.—I’ve had
it put over me.**

CHAP : XXin. HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT.

They had the Huitzilopochtli ceremony at night, in the
wide yard in front of the church. The guard of Huitzilo¬
pochtli, in sarapes of black, red and yellow stripes, striped
like tigers or wasps, stood holding torches of blazing ocote.
A tall bonfire was built, but unkindled, in the centre of
the yard.

In the towers where the bells had been, fires were blazing
and the heavy drum of Huitzilopochtli went rolling its deep,
sinister notes. It had been sounding all the while since the
sun went down.

The crowd gathered under the trees, outside the gates
in front of the church. The church doors were closed.

There was a bang of four firework cannons exploding
simultaneously, then four rockets shot up into the sky,
leaning in the four directions, and exploding in showers of
red, green, white and yellow.

The church doors opened, and Cipriano appeared, in his
brilliant sarape of Huitzilopochtli, and with three green
parrot feathers erect on his brow. He was carrying a torch.
He stooped and lit the big bonfire, then plucked out four
blazing brands, and tossed them to four of his men, who
stood waiting, naked save for their black breech-cloths.
The men caught the brands as they flew, and ran in the
four directions, to kindle the four bonfires that waited, one

in each corner of the yard. •

The guard had taken off their blankets and blouses, and
were naked to the red sash. The lighter drum began to beat
for the dance, and the dance began, the half-naked men
throwing their blazing torches whirling in the air, catching
them as they came down, dancing all the while. Cipriano,
in the centre, threw up brand after brand from the fire.

Now that he was stripped of his blanket, his body was
seen painted in horizontal bars of red and black, while from
his mouth went a thin green line, and from his eyes a band

of yellow.

The five fires, built hollow of little towers of ocote faggots,
sent pure flame in a rush up to the dark sky, illuminating
the dancing men, who sang in deep voices as they danced.

898

HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT

899

The fires rushed rapidly upwards in flame. The drum
beat without ceasing. And the men of Huitzilopochtli
danced on, like demons. Meanwhile the crowd sat in the
old Indian silence, their black eyes glittering in the firelight.
And gradually the fires began to die down, the white facade
of the church, that had danced also to the yellow flames,
began to go bluish above, merging into the night, rose-
coloured below, behind the dark shapes that danced to the
sinking fires.

Suddenly the dance ceased, the men threw their sarapes
around them, and sat down. Little ocote fires upon the
cane tripods flickered here and there, in a silence that
lasted for some minutes. Then the drum sounded, and a
man began to sing, in a clear, defiant voice, the First Song
of Huitzilopochtli:

“ I am Huitzilopochtli,

The Red Huitzilopochtli,

The blood-red.

I am Huitzilopocntli,

Yellow of the sun,

Sun in the blood.

I am Huitzilopochtli,

White of the bone,

Bone in the blood.

I am Huitzilopochtli,

With a blade of grass between my teeth,

I am Huitzilopochtli, sitting in the dark.

With my redness staining the body of the dark,

I watch by the fire.

I Wait behind men.

In the stillness of my night
• The cactus sharpens his thorn.

The grass feels with his roots for the other sun.

Deeper than the roots of the mango tree
Down in the centre of the earth
a the yellow, serpent-yellow shining of my sun.

400

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Oh, beware of him !

Oh, beware of me !

Who runs athwart my serpent-flame
Gets bitten and must die.

I am the sleeping and waking
Of the anger of the manhood of men.

I am the leaping and quaking
Of fire bent back again.”

The song came to an end. There was a pause. Then
all the men of Huitzilopochtli took it up again, changing
the “ I ” into “ He.”

“ He is Huitzilopochtli,

The Red Huitzilopochtli,

The blood-red.

He is Huitzilopochtli,

Yellow of the sun,

Sun in the blood.

He is Huitzilopochtli,

White of the bone,

Bone in the blood.

He is Huitzilopochtli, #

With a blade of green grass between his teeth.

He is Huitzilopochtli, sitting in the dark.

With his redness staining the body of the night.

He is watching by the fire.

Waiting behind men.

In the stillness of his night
Cactuses sharpen their thorns.

Grass feels downwards with his roots.

Deeper than the roots of the mango tree
Down in the centre of the earth

Shines the yellow, serpent-yellow shining of the sun.

HUITZILOPOCHTLPS NIGHT

401

Oh, men, take care, take care !

Take care of him and it.

Nor run aslant his rays.

Who is bitten, dies.

He is Huitzilopochtli, sleeping or waking
Serpent in the bellies of men.

Huitzilopochtli, leaping and quaking
Fire of the passion of men.”

The big fires had all died down. Only the little flames
on the tripods lit up the scene with a ruddy glow. The
guard withdrew to the outer wall of the yard, holding
bayonets erect. The big drum was going alone, slowly.

The yard was now a clear space, with the glowing red
heaps of the bonfires, and the ocote flames flapping. And
now was seen a platform erected against the white wall of
the church.

In the silence the big doors of the church opened, and

Cipriano came out, in his bright sarape, holding in his hand

a bunch of black leaves, or feathers, and with a tuft of

scarlet feathers, black-tipped, rising from the back of his

head. He mounted the platform and stood facing the

crowd, the light of a torch on his face and on the brilliant

feathers that rose like flames from the back of his head.

After him came a strange procession : a peon in floppy

white clothes, led prisoner between two of the guards of

Huitzilopochtli : who wore their sarapes with red and black

and yellow and white and green stripes : then another peon

prisoner : then another : in all, five, the fifth one tall, limp-

uig, and with a red cross painted on the breast of his white

jacket. Last of all came a woman-prisoner, likewise be-

^ rw £ > en two guards, her hair flowing loose, over a red tunic.

They mounted the platform. The peons, prisoners, were

placed in a row, their guards behind them. The limping

peon was apart, with his two guards behind him : the woman

again was apart, her two guards behind her.

The big drum ceased, and a bugle rang out, a long,

oud triumphant note, repeated three times. Then the

e S e ^ rums » or t ^ le sma U tom-toms like kettle-drums,
rattled fierce as hail.

402

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Cipriano lifted his hand, and there was silence.

Out of the silence he began to speak, in his short, martial
sentences :

“ Man that is man is more than a man.

No man is man till he is more than a man.

Till the power is in him
Which is not his own.

The power is in me from behind the sun.

And from middle earth.

I am Huitzilopochtli.

I am dark as the sunless under-earth,

And yellow as the fire that consumes,

And white as bone.

And red as blood.

•

But I touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl.

And between our fingers rose a blade of green grass.

I touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl.

Lo 1 I am lord of the watches of the night
And the dream of the night rises from me like a red
feather.

I am the watcher, and master ''i the dream.

In the dream of the night I see the grey dogs prowling.
Prowling to devour the dream.

In the night the soul of a coward creeps out of him
Like a grey dog whose mouth is foul with rabies,

Creeping among the sleeping and the dreaming, who are
lapped in my dark,

And in whom the dream sits up like a rabbit, lifting long
ears tipped with night,

On the dream-slopes browsing like a deer in the dusk.

In the night I see the grey dogs creeping, out of the
sleeping men

Who are cowards, who are liars, who are traitors, who
have no dreams

That prick their ears like a rabbit, or browse in the dark
like deer,

But whose dreams are dogs, grey dogs with yellow mouths.

HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT 408

From the liars, from the thieves, from the false and
treacherous and mean

I see the grey dogs creeping out, where my deer are
browsing in the dark.

Then I take my knife, and throw it upon the grey dog.
And lo 1 it sticks between the ribs of a man 1
The house of the grey dog 1

Beware 1 Beware 1

Of the men and the women who walk among you.

You know not how many are houses of grey dogs.

Men that seem harmless, women with fair words,

Maybe they kennel the grey dog.”

The drums began to beat and the singer began to sing,
clear and pure :

The Song of the Grey Dog.

“ When you sleep and know it not
The grey dog creeps among you.

In your sleep, you twist, your soul hurts you.

The grey dog is chewing your entrails.

Then call on Huitzilopochtli :

The grey dog caught me at the cross-roads
As I went down the road of sleep
And crossed the road of the uneasy.

The gTey dog leapt at my entrails.

Huitzilopochtli, call him off.

Lo • the Great One answers. Track him down!

Kill him in his unclean house,

Down the road of the uneasy
You track the grey dog home
To his house in the heart of a traitor,

A thief, a murderer of dreams.

And you kill him there with one stroke.

Crying: Huitzilopochtli , is this well dontf
That your sleep be not as a cemetery
Where dogs creep unclean.**

404

THE PLUMED SERPENT

The song ceased, and there was silence. Then Cipriano
beckoned to the men to bring forward the peon with the
black cross painted on his front and back. He limped
forward.

Cipriano : “ What man is that, limping? ”

Guards : “ It is Guillermo, overseer of Don Ramon, who
betrayed Don Ramon, his master.”

Cipriano : “ Why does he limp? ”

Guards : “ He fell from the window on to the rocks.”

Cipriano : “ What made him wish to betray his master? ”

Guards : “ His heart is a grey dog, and a woman, a grey
bitch, enticed him forth.”

Cipriano : “ What woman enticed the grey dog forth ? ”

The guards came forward with the woman.

Guards : “ This woman, Maruca, my Lord, with the grey
bitch heart.”

Cipriano : “ Is it she, indeed? ”

Guards : ** It is she.”

Cipriano : “ The grey dog, and the grey bitch, we kill, for
their mouths are yellow with poison ? Is it well,
men of Huitzilopochtli ? ”

Guards : “ It is very well, my Lord.”

The guards stripped the peon Guillermo of his white
clothes, leaving him naked, in a grey loin-cloth, with a grey-
white cross painted on his naked breast. The woman, too,
had a grey-white cross painted on her body. She stood
in a short petticoat of grey wool.

Cipriano : “ The grey dog, and the grey bitch shall run no
more about the world. We will bury their bodies in
quick-lime, till their souls are eaten, and their bodies,
and nothing is left. For lime is the thirsty bone that
swallows even a soul and is not slaked.—Bind them
with the grey cords, put ash on their heads.”

The guards quickly obeyed. The prisoners, ash-grey,
gazed with black, glittering eyes, making not a sound. A
guard stood behind each of them. Cipriano gave a sign,
and quick as lightning the guards had got the throats of the
two victims in a grey cloth, and with a sharp jerk had
broken their necks, lifting them backwards in one move¬
ment. The grey cloths they tied hard and tight round the
throats, laying the twitching bodies on the floor.

Cipriano turned to the crowd :

HUITZILOPO CHTLI’S NIGHT

405

“ The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.

Blue is the breath of Quetzalcoatl.

Red is Huitzilopochtli’s blood.

But the grey dog belongs to the ash of the world.
The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.

Dead are the grey dogs.

Living are the Lords of Life.

Blue is the deep sky and the deep water.

Red is the blood and the fire.

Yellow is the flame.

The bone is white and alive.

The hair of night is dark over our faces.

But the grey dogs are among the ashes.

The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.’*

Then he turned once more, to the other, imprisoned peons.
Cipriano : “ Who are these four? **

Guards : ** Four who came to kill Don Ram6n.**

Cipriano : “ Four men, against one man ? **

Guards : “ They were more than four, my Lord.**
Cipriano : “ When many men come against one, what is
the name of the many ? **

Guards : “ Cowards, my Lord.**

Cipriano : “ Cowards it is. They are less than men. Men
that are less than men are not good enough for the
light of the sun. If men that are men will live, men
that are less than men must be put away, lest they
multiply too much. Men that are more than men
have the judgment of men that are less than men.
Shall they die ? *’

Guards : “ They shall surely die, my Lord.**

Cipriano : “ Yet my hand has touched the hand of Quet¬
zalcoatl, and among the black leaves one sprung
green, with the colour of Malintzi.”

An attendant came and lifted Cipriano’s sarape over his
nead, leaving his body bare to the waist. The guards like¬
wise took off their sarapes.

U P his fist, in which he held a little tuft
or black feathers, or leaves.

Then he said slowly :

406

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Huitzilopochtli gives the black blade of death'.

Take it bravely.

Take death bravely.

Go bravely across the border, admitting your mistake.

Determine to go on and on, till you enter the Morning
Star.

Quetzalcoatl will show you the way.

Malintzi of the green dress will open the door.

In the fountain you will lie down.

If you reach the fountain, and lie down
And the fountain covers your face, forever,

You will have departed forever from your mistake.

And the man that is more than a man in you
Will wake at last from the clean forgetting
And stand up, and look about him,

Ready again for the business of being a man.

But Huitzilopochtli touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl
And one gTeen leaf sprang among the black.

The green leaf of Malintzi

Who pardons once, and no more.”

Cipriano turned to the four peons. He held out his fist
with the four black twigs, to the first. This first one, a
little man, peered at the leaves curiously.

“ There is no green one,” he said sceptically.

“ Good 1” said Cipriano. “ Then receive a black.”
And he handed him a black leaf.

“ I knew it,” said the man, and he threw the leaf away

with contempt and defiance. .

The second man drew a black leaf. He stood gazing at

it, as if fascinated, turning it round.

The third man drew a leaf whose lower half ^as green.
“ See !” said Cipriano. “ The green leaf of Malintzi I
And he handed the last black leaf to the last man.

“ Have I got to die?” said the last man.

*t Yes.”

“ I don’t want to die, Patrdn .”

“ You played with death, and it has spning upon you.
The eyes of the three men were blindfolded with black

HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT

407

cloths, their blouses and pantaloons were taken away.
Cipriano took a bright, thin dagger.

“ The Lords of Life are Masters of Death,” he said in
a loud, clear voice.

And swift as lightning he stabbed the blindfolded men
to the heart, with three swift, heavy stabs. Then he
lifted the red dagger and threw it down.

“ The Lords of Life are Masters of Death,” he repeated.

The guards lifted the bleeding bodies one by one, and
carried them into the church. There remained only the
one prisoner, with the green leaf.

“ Put the green leaf of Malintzi between his brows; for
Malintzi pardons once, and no more,” said Cipriano.

“ Yes, my Lord 1” replied the guard.

And they led the man away into the church.

Cipriano followed, the last of his guard after him.

In a few minutes the drums began to beat and men came
slowly streaming into the church. Women were not
admitted. All the interior was hung with red and black
banners. At the side of the chancel was a new idol : a
heavy, seated figure of Huitzilopochtli, done in black lava
stone. And round him burned twelve red candles. The
idol held the bunch of black strips, or leaves in his hand.
And at his feet lay the five dead bodies.

The fire on the altar was flickering high, to the dark
statue of Quetzalcoatl. On his little throne Ram6n sat,
wearing his blue and white colours of Quetzalcoatl. There
was another corresponding throne next him, but it was
empty. Six of the guard of Quetzalcoatl stood by Ram6n :
but Huitzilopochtli’8 side of the chancel was empty save
for the dead.

The hard drums of Huitzilopochtli were beating inces¬
santly outside, with a noise like madness. Inside was
the soft roll of the drum of Quetzalcoatl. And the men
nom the crowd outside thronged slowly in, between the
guard of Quetzalcoatl.

A flute sounded the summons to close the doors. The
P^uuis of Quetzalcoatl ceased, and from the towers was
a ^ a * n wild bugle of Huitzilopochtli.
eftm e jV* 0WI1 the centre of the church, in silence, bare-foot,
hln £ * . Precession of Huitzilopochtli, naked save for the
loin-cloths and the paint, and the scarlet feathers of

408

THE PLUMED SERPENT

the head-dresses. Cipriano had his face painted with a
white jaw, a thin band of green stretched from his mouth,
a band of black across his nose, yellow from his eyes, and
scarlet on his brow. One green feather rose from his fore¬
head, and behind his head a beautiful head-dress of scarlet
feathers. A band of red was painted round his breast,
yellow round his middle. The rest was ash-grey.

After him came his guard, their faces red, black and
white, their bodies painted as Cipriano’s, and a scarlet
feather rising from the back of their head. The hard, dry
drum of Huitzilopochtli beat monotonously.

As the Living Huitzilopochtli came near the altar steps,
the Living Quetzalcoatl rose and came to meet him. The
two saluted, each covering his eyes with his left hand for
a moment, then touching fingers with the right hand.

Cipriano stood before the statue of Huitzilopochtli,
dipped his hand in a stone bowl, and giving the loud cry
or whoop of Huitzilopochtli, lifted up his red hand. His
guard uttered the loud cry, and quickly filed past, each
man dipping his hand and raising his wet, red fist. The
hard drums of Huitzilopochtli rattled like madness in the
church, then fell suddenly silent.

Ram6n : “ Why is your hand red, Huitzilopochtli, my
brother? ”

Cipriano : “ It is the blood of the treacherous, Oh Quet¬
zalcoatl. ”

Ramon : “ What have they betrayed ? ”

Cipriano : “ The yellow sun and the heart of darkness;
the hearts of men, and the buds of women. While
they lived, the Morning Star could not be seen.”

Ramdn : “ And are they verily dead ? ”

Cipriano : “ Verily dead, my Lord.”

Ramon : “ Their blood is shed? ”

Cipriano : “ Yes, my Lord, save that the grey dogs shed
no blood. Two died the bloodless death of the grey
dogs, three died in blood.”

Ramon : “ Give me the blood of the three, my brother
Huitzilopochtli, to sprinkle the fire.”

Cipriano brought the stone bowl, and the little bunch
of black leaves from Huitzilopochtli’s idol. Ram6n slowly,
gently, sprinkled a little blood on the fire, with the black

leaves.

HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT

409

Ram6n : “ Darkness, drink the blood of expiation.

Sun, swallow up the blood of expiation.

Rise, Morning Star, between the divided sea.”

He gave back the bowl and the leaves to Huitzilopochtli,
who placed them by the black idol.

Ramon : “ Thou who didst take the lives of the three,
Huitzilopochtli, my brother, what wilt thou do with
the souls ? ”

Cipriano : “ Even give them to thee, my Lord, Quetzal-
coatl, my Lord of the Morning Star.”

Ramon : “ Yea, give them to me and I will wrap them in
my breath and send them the longest journey, to
the sleep and the far awakening.”

Cipriano : “ My Lord is lord of two ways.”

The naked, painted guard of Huitzilopochtli came and
carried the dead bodies of the three stabbed men, carried
them on red biers, and laid them at the foot of the Quet-
zalcoatl statue.

Ram6n : “ So, there is a long way to go, past the sun to
the gate of the Morning Star. And if the sun is
angry he strikes swifter than a jaguar, and the whirr
of the winds is like an angry eagle, and the upper
waters strike in wrath like silver-coloured snakes.
Ah, three souls, make peace now with the sun and
winds and waters, and go in courage, with the breath
of Quetzalcoatl around you like a cloak. Fear not
and shrink not and fail not; but come to the end of
the longest journey, and let the fountain cover your
face. So shall all at length be made new.”

When he had spoken to the dead, Ram6n took incense
and threw it on the file, so clouds of blue smoke arose.
Then with a censer he swung the blue smoke over the dead.
Then he unfolded three blue cloths and covered the dead.
Ihen the guards of Quetzalcoatl lifted the biers, and the
flute of Quetzalcoatl sounded.

u Salute the Morning Star!” cried Ram6n, turning to

he light beyond the statue of Quetzalcoatl, and throwing
his right arm in the Quetzalcoatl prayer. Every man
^rned to the light and threw up his arm in the passion,
the silence of the Morning Star filled the church.

The drum of Quetzalcoatl sounded : the guards slowly

0V€d away with the three blue-wrapped dead.

410

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Then came the voice of the Living Huitzilopochtli :

“ Upon the dead grey dogs the face of Quetzalcoatl can¬
not look. Upon the corpses of grey dogs rises no Morn¬
ing Star. But the fire of corpses shall consume them.’*

There was a sharp rattle of the dry drums of Huitzilo¬
pochtli. Ram6n remained with his back to the church, his
arm upraised to the Morning Star. And the guard of
Huitzilopochtli lifted the strangled bodies, laid them on
biers, covered them with grey cloths, and bore them away.

The bugle of Huitzilopochtli sounded.

Cipriano : The dead are on their way. Quetzalcoatl
helps them on the longest journey.—But the grey dogs
sleep within the quick-lime, in the slow corpse-fire.—It
is finished.

Ram6n dropped his arm and turned to the church. All
men dropped their hands. The soft drums of Quetzalcoatl
sounded, mingling with the hard drums of Huitzilopochtli.
Then both guards began to sing together :

Huitzilopochtli's Watch.

** Red Huitzilopochtli

Keeps day and night apart.

Huitzilopochtli the golden

Guards life from death, and death from life.

No grey-dogs, cowards, pass him.

No spotted traitors crawl by,

False fair ones cannot slip through
Past him, from the one to the other.

Brave men have peace at nightfall.

True men look up at the dawn,

Men in their manhood walk out
Into blue day, past Huitzilopochtli.

Red Huitzilopochtli
Is the purifier.

Black Huitzilopochtli
Is doom.

HUITZILOPOCHTLFS NIGHT

411

Huitzilopochtli golden
Is the liberating fire.

White Huitzilopochtli
Is washed bone.

Green Huitzilopochtli
Is Malintzi’s blade of grass.”

At the beginning of each stanza, the Guard of Huitzilo¬
pochtli struck their left palm with their scarlet right fist,
and the drums gave a great crash, a terrific splash of noise.
When the song ended, the drums gradually died down, like
tubsiding thunder, leaving the hearts of men re-echoing.
Ram6n : “ Why is your hand so red, Huitzilopochtli? ”
Cipriano : ** With blood of slain men, Brother.”

Ram6n : “ Must it always be red ? ”

Cipriano : “ Till green-robed Malintzi brings her water-
bowl.”

The bugle and the flute both sounded. The guard of
Huitzilopochtli put out the red candles, one by one, the
guard of Quetzalcoatl extinguished the blue candles. The
church was dark, save for the small, but fierce blue-white
light beyond the Quetzalcoatl statue, and the red smoulder¬
ing on the altar.

Ramdn began slowly to speak :

“ The dead are on their journey, the way is dark.

There is only the Morning Star.

Beyond the white of whiteness.

Beyond the blackness of black,

Beyond spoken day.

Beyond the unspoken passion of night.

The light which is fed from two vessels
From the black oil and the white
Shines at the gate.

Agate to the innermost place

Where the Breath and the Fountains commingle,

Where the dead are living, and the living are dead.

The deeps that life cannot fathom,

The Source and the End, of which we know
Only that it is, and its life is our life and our death.

412

THE PLUMED SERPENT

All men cover their eyes
Before the unseen.

All men be lost in silence.

Within the noiseless.”

The church was utterly still, all men standing with a
hand pressed over their eyes.

Till there was one note of a silver gong, and the green
candles of Malintzi were being lighted in the altar place.—
Ramon’s voice was heard again :

“ Like the green candles of Malintzi
Like a tree in new leaf.

The rain of blood is fallen, is gone into the earth.

The dead have gone the long journey
Beyond the star.

Huitzilopochtli has thrown his black mantle
To those who would sleep.

When the blue wind of Quetzalcoatl
Waves softly,

When the water of Malintzi falls
Making a greenness :

Count the red grains of the Huitzilopochtli
Fire in your hearts. Oh men.

And blow the ash away.

For the living live,

And the dead die.

But the fingers of all touch the fingers of all
In the Morning Star.”

CHAP : XXIV. MALINTZI.

When the women were shut out of the church, Kate
went home gloomy and uneasy. The executions shocked
and depressed her. She knew that Ram6n and Cipriano
did deliberately what they did : they believed in their
deeds, they acted with all their conscience. And as men,
probably they were right.

But they seemed nothing but men. When Cipriano
said : Man that is man is more than a man, he seemed to
be driving the male significance to its utmost, and beyond,
with a sort of demonism. It seemed to her all terrible
will , the exertion of pure, awful will.

And deep in her soul came a revulsion against this mani¬
festation of pure will. It was fascinating also. There
was something dark and lustrous and fascinating to her in
Cipriano, and in Ram6n. The black, relentless power,
even passion of the will in men ! The strange, sombre,
lustrous beauty of it! She knew herself under the spell.

At the same time, as is so often the case with any spell,
it did not bind her completely. She was spell-bound, but
not utterly acquiescent. In one corner of her soul was
revulsion and a touch of nausea.

Ramon and Cipriano no doubt were right for themselves,
for their people and country. But for herself, ultimately,
ultimately she belonged elsewhere. Not to this terrible,
natural will which seemed to beat its wings in the very
air of the American continent. Always will, will, will,
without remorse or relenting. This was America to her :
all the Americas. Sheer will 1

The Will of God ! She began to understand that once
fearsome phrase. At the centre of all things, a dark,
momentous Will sending out its terrific rays and vibrations,
like some vast octopus. And at the other end of the vibra¬
tion, men, created men, erect in the dark potency, answer¬
ing Will with will, like gods or demons.

It was wonderful too. But where was woman, in this
terrible interchange of. will? Truly only a subservient,
instrumental thing: the soft stone on whigh the man

418

414

THE PLUMED SERPENT

sharpened the knife of his relentless volition : the soft lode-
stone to magnetise his blade of steel and keep all its
molecules alive in the electric flr.TT.

Ah yes, it was wonderful. It was, as Ram6n said, a
manifestation, a manifestation of the Godhead. But to
the Godhead as a sheer and awful Will she could not
respond.

Joachim, letting himself be bled to death for people who
would profit nothing by his sacrifice, he was the other
extreme. The black and magnificent pride of will which
comes out of the volcanic earth of Mexico had been un¬
known to him. He was one of the white, self-sacrificing
gods. Hence her bitterness. And hence, naturally, the
spell of beauty and lustrous satisfaction which Cipriano
could cast over her. She was in love with him, when he
was with her; in his arms, she was quite gone in his spell.
She was the deep, slumbrous lodestone which set all his
bones glittering with the energy of relentless pride. And
she herself derived a great gratification in the embrace, a
sense of passive, downward-sinking power, profound.

Yet she could not be purely this, this thing of sheer
reciprocity. Surely, though her woman’s nature was
reciprocal to his male, surely it was more than that!
Surely he and she were not two potent and reciprocal
currents between which the Morning Star flashed like a
spark out of nowhere. Surely this was not it? Surely
she had one tiny Morning Star inside her, which was
herself, her own very soul and star-self I

But he would never admit this. The tiny star of her
very self he would never see. To him she was but the
answer to his call, the sheath for his blade, the cloud to
his lightning, the earth to his rain, the fuel to his fire.

Alone, she was nothing. Only as the pure female corres¬
ponding to his pure male, did she sigpify.

As an isolated individual, she had little or no significance.
As a woman on her own, she was repulsive, and even evil, to
him. She was not real till she was reciprocal.

To a great extent this was true, and she knew it. To a
great excent, the same was true of him, and without her to
give him the power, he too would not achieve his own man¬
hood and meaning. With her or without her, he would be
beyond ordinary men, because the power was m him. But

MAliINTZI

415

failing her, he would never make his ultimate achieve¬
ment, he would never be whole. He would be chiefly an

instrument. „ u -cr

He knew this too : though perhaps not well enough. He

would strive to keep her, to have her, for his own fulfilment.
He would not let her go.

But that little star of her own single self, would he ever
recognize that? Nay, did he even recognize any single
star of his own being? Did he not conceive of himself
as a power and a potency on the face of the earth, an
embodied will, like a rushing dark wind? And hence,
inevitably, she was but the stone of rest to his potency, his
bed of sleep, the cave and lair of his male will.

What else ? To him there was nothing else. The star !
Don, Ramdn’s Morning Star was something that sprung
between him and her and hung shining, the strange third
thing that was both of them and neither of them, between
his night and her day.

Was it true? Was she nothing, nothing, by herself?
And he, alone, failing his last manhood, without her was
he nothing, or next to nothing? As a fig tree which
grows up, but never comes to flower.

Was this thing true, the same of both of them ?—that
alone, they were next to nothing? Each of them, separate,
next to nothing. Apart in a sort of grey, mechanical
twilight, without a star?

And together, in strange reciprocity, flashing darkly till
the Morning Star rose between them ?

He would say to her, as Ram6n had said of Carlota :
“ Soul 1 No, you have no soul of your own. You have
at best only half a soul. It takes a man and a woman
together to make a soul. The soul is the Morning Star,
emerging from the two. One alone cannot have a soul.”

This Ram6n said. And she knew it conveyed what
Cipriano really felt. Cipriano could not see Kate as a
being by herself. And if he lived a thousand more years,
he would never see her as such. He would see her only
as reciprocal to himself. As the balance of him, and the
correspondence on the other side of heaven.

“ Let the Morning Star rise between us/* he would say.
“ Alone you are nothing, and I am manquS. But together
we are the wings of the Morning.”

410

THE PLUMED SERPENT

Was it true? Was this the final answer to man’s
assertion of individuality?

Was it true ? And was it her sacred duty to sit beside him
in the green dress of Malintzi, in the church, the goddess
admitting her halfness? Her halfness 1 Was there no
star of the single soul? Was that all an illusion?

Was the individual an illusion? Man, any man, every
man, by himself just a fragment, knowing no Morning
Star? And every woman the same; by herself, starless
and fragmentary. Even in the relation to the innermost
God, still fragmentary and unblest.

Was it true, that the gate was the Morning Star, the
only entrance to the Innermost? And the Morning Star
rises between the two, and between the many, but never
from one alone.

And was a man but a dark and arrowy will, and woman
the bow from which the arrow is shot? The bow without
the arrow was as nothing, and the arrow without the boM
only a short-range dart, ineffectual ?

Poor Kate, it was hard to have to reflect this. It meant
a submission she had never made. It meant the death
of her individual self. It meant abandoning so much, even
her own very foundations. For she had believed truly
that every man and every woman alike was founded on
the individual.

Now, must she admit that the individual was an illusion
and a falsification? There was no such animal. Except
in the mechanical world. In the world of machines, the
individual machine is effectual. The individual, like the
perfect being, does not and cannot exist, in the vivid
world. We are all fragments. And at the best, halves.
The only whole thing is the Morning Star, Which can
only rise between two : or between many.

And men can only meet in the light of the Morning

Star.

She thought again of Cipriano and the executions, and
she covered her hands over her face. Was this the
knife to which she must be sheath? Was it such a star
of power and relentlessness that must rise between her
and him? Him naked and painted, with his soldiers,
dancing and sweating and shouting among them. Herself
unseen and nowhere !

MALLNTZI

417

as she sat rocking in her terrible loneliness and misgiv¬
ing, she heard the drums on the towers, and the sound of
rockets. She went to the gate. Over the church, in
the night sky, hung a spangling cloud of red and blue fire,
the colours of Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl. The night
of Huitzilopochtli would be over. The sky was dark again,
and there were all the stars, beyond, far, far beyond where
the spangling had been.

She went indoors again, to retire. The servants had
all run out to see the rockets. Ezequiel would be in with
the men in church.

She heard footsteps on the gravel walk, and suddenly
Cipriano stood in the doorway, in his white clothes. He
took off his hat, quickly. His black eyes were sparkling,
almost blazing to her, with a flashing of light such as she
had never seen. There were still smears of paint on his
face. In the blazing of his eyes he seemed to be smiling
to her, but in a dazzling, childish way.

“ Malintzi,” he said to her in Spanish. ** Oh, come !
Come and put on the green dress. I cannot be the Living
Huitzilopochtli, without a bride. I cannot be it, Malintzi! ”

He stood before her, flickering and flashing and strangely
young, vulnerable, as young and boyish as flame. She saw
that when the fire came free in him, he would be like this
always, flickering, flashing with a flame of virgin youth.
Now, not will at all. Sensitive as a boy. And calling her
only with. his boyish flame. The living, flickering, fiery
Irish. This was first. The Will she had seen was subsidiary
and instrumental, the Wish in armour.

. b een so used to fighting for her own soul with

individualistic men, that for a moment she felt old, and
uncertain. The strange, flashing vulnerability in him, the
nakedness of the living Wish, disconcerted her. She was
used to men who had themselves well in hand, and were
seeking their own ends as individuals.

“ Where do you want me to come ? ” she said.

To the church,” he said. “ It is mine to-night. I
am Hvutzflopochtli : but I cannot be it alone,” he added
with quick, wistful, watchful smile, as if aU his flesh were
nickering with delicate fire.

iUte wrapped herself in a dark tartan shawl and went
with^him. He stepped quickly, in the short, Indian way.

418

THE PLUMED SERPENT

The night was very dark. Down on the beach some fire¬
works were flaming, and the people were all watching.

They entered the yard of the church from the back, by
the priest’s little gate. Soldiers were already rolled up in
their blankets, sleeping under the wall. Cipriano opened
the little vestry door. Kate passed into the darkness. He
followed, lighting a candle.

“ My soldiers know I am watching to-night in the church,”
he said. “ They will keep guard.”

The body of the church was quite dark, but the bluish
white light burned above the statue of Quetzalcoatl, giving
not much light.

Cipriano lifted his candle to the black statue of Huit-
zilopocfitli. Then he turned to Kate, his black eyes flashing.

“ I am Huitzilopochtli, Malintzi,” he said in his low,
Indian Spanish. “ But I cannot be it without you. Stay
with me, Malintzi. Say you are the bride of the Living

Huitzilopochtli.”

“ Yes 1 ” she replied, “ I say it.”

Convulsive flames of joy and triumph seemed to go over
his face. He lit two candles in front of Huitzilopochtli.

“ Come ! ” he said. “ Put on the green dress.”

He took her to the vestry, where were many folded
sarapes, and the silver bowl and other implements of the
church, and left her while she put on the dress of Malintzi
she had worn when Ramon married them.

When she stepped out she found Cipriano naked and in
his paint, before the statue of Huitzilopochtli, on a rug

of jaguar skins. „

“ I am the living Huitzilopochtli,” he murmured to her

m Y^u ° f are CSt Malintzi,” he said. “ The bride of

H Theconvullion of exultance went over his face. He took
her hand in his left hand, and they stood facing the bluish

light. . ,

“ Cover your face ! ” he said to her.

They covered their faces in the salute.

“ Now salute Quetzalcoatl.” And he flung up his arm.
She held out her left hand, in the woman s salu e.

Then they turned to the statue of Huitzilopochtli.

“ Salute Huitzilopochtli! ” he said, bringing is g

MALINTZI

419

fist down with a smash in the palm of his left hand. But
this was the male salute. He taught her to press her hands
together in front of her breast, then shoot them out towards
the idol.

Then he put a little lamp of earthenware between the
feet of Huitzilopochtli. From the right knee of the idol
he took a little black vessel of oil, making her take a little
white vessel from the god’s left knee.

“ Now,” he said, “ together we fill the lamp.”

And together they poured the oil from their little pitchers,
into the saucer-shaped lamp.

“ Now together we light it,” he said.

He took one of the two candles burning before the black
idol, she took the other, and with the flames dripping and
leaping together, they kindled the floating wick of the lamp.
It burned in a round blue bud, then rose higher.

“ Blow out your candle,” he said. “ It is our Morning
Star.” e

They blew out the two candles. It was almost dark now,
with the slow light, like a snow-drop, of their united lives
floating between the feet of Huitzilopochtli, and the ever¬
lasting light burning small and bluish beyond the statue
of Quetzalcoatl.

At the foot of the altar, beside the chair of Huitzilopochtli,
a third chair was placed.

“Sit in your throne of Malintzi,” he said to her.

They sat side by side, his hand holding her hand, in
complete silence, looking down the dark church. He had
placed tufts of greenish flowers, like thin, greenish lilac,
above her chair, and their perfume was like a dream, strong,
overpoweringly sweet on the darkness.

Strange how naive he was 1 He was not like Ram6n,
rather ponderous and deliberate in his ceremonials. Cipriano
m his own little deeds to-night with her, was naive like a
chUd. She could hardly look at that bud of light which he
said meant their united lives, without a catch at her heart.

S .V° ft and round ’ and he had such a « implicit,
^^? at . ,s L fa ? tlon £ its symbol. It all gave him a certain
a, childish joy. The strange convulsions like flames of

Tk gratification wen * over his face I

««• f# * God ! ” s , h , e th °ught. “ There are more ways than
one of becoming like a little child.”

420

THE PLUMED SERPENT

The flaminess and the magnificence of the beginning :
this was what Cipriano wanted to bring to his marriage.
The reeling, powerful perfume of those invisible green
flowers, that the peons call buena de noche: good by night.

Strange—that which he brought to marriage was some¬
thing flamey and unabashed, forever virginal. Not, as she
had always known in men, yearning and seeking his own
ends. Naively bringing his flame to her flame.

As she sat in that darkened church in the intense perfume
of flowers, in the seat of Malintzi, watching the bud of her
life united with his, between the feet of the idol, and feel¬
ing his dark hand softly holding her own, with the soft, deep
Indian heat, she felt her own childhood coming back on
her. The years seemed to be reeling away in great circles,
falling away from her.

Leaving her sitting there like a girl in her first adolescence.
The Living Huitzilopoctli 1 Ah, easily he was the living
Huitzilopochtli. More than anything. More than Cipriano,
more than a male man, he was the living Huitzilopochtli.
And she was the goddess bride, Malintzi of the green dress.

Ah, yes, it was childish. But it was actually so. She
was perhaps fourteen years old, and he was fifteen. And
he was the young Huitzilopochtli, and she was the bride
Malintzi, the bride-girl. She had seen it. When the flame
came up in him and licked him all over, he was young and
vulnerable as a boy of fifteen, and he would always be so,
even when he was seventy.

And this was her bridegroom. Here at last he was not a
will. When he came clothed in his own free flame,
it was not will that clothed him. Let him be a general,
an executioner, what he liked, in the world. The flame
of their united lives was a naked bud of flame. Their
marriage was a young, vulnerable flame.

So he sat in silence on his throne, holding her hand in
silence, till the years reeled away from her in fleeing circles,
and she sat, as every real woman can sit, no matter at what
age, a girl again, and for him, a virgin. He held her hand
in silence, till she was Malintzi, and virgin for him, and
when they looked at one another, and their eyes met, the
two flames rippled in oneness. She closed her eyes, and
was dark.

Then later, when she opened her eyes and saw the bud

MALINTZI

421

of flame just above her, and the black idol invisibly crouch¬
ing, she heard his strange voice, the voice of a boy hissing

in naive ecstasy, in Spanish :

“ Miel 1 Miel de Malintzi!—Honey of Malintzi! ”

And she pressed him to her breast, convulsively. His
innermost flame was always virginal, it was always the
first time. And it made her again always a virgin girl.
She could feel their two flames flowing together.

How else, she said to herself, is one to begin again, save
by re-finding one’s virginity ? And when one finds one’s
virginity, one realizes one is among the gods. He is of the
gods, and so am I. Why should I judge him !

So, when she thought of him and his soldiers, tales of
swift cruelty she had heard of him : when she remembered
his stabbing the three helpless peons, she thought : Why
should I judge him ? He is of the gods. And when he
comes to me he lays his pure, quick flame to mine, and
every time I am a young girl again, and every time he takes
the flower of my virginity, and I his. It leaves me insouciant
like a young girl. What do I care if he kills people ? His
flame is young and clean. He is Huitzilopochtli, and I am
Malintzi. What do I care, what Cipriano Viedma does or
doesn’t do ? Or even what Kate Leslie does or doesn’t do \

CHAP : XXV. TERESA.

Ramon somewhat surprised Kate by marrying again, a
couple of months or so after the death of Dona Carlota.
The new bride was a young woman of about twenty-eight,
called Teresa. There was a very quiet civil weddiDg, and
Ramon brought his new wife to Jamiltepec.

He had known her since she was a child, for she was
the daughter of the famous hacienda of Las Yemas, some
twelve miles inland from Jamiltepec. Don Tomas, her
father, had been a staunch friend of the Carrascos.

But Don Tomas had died a year ago, leaving the large,
flourishing tequila hacienda to his three children, to be
administrated by Teresa. Teresa was the youngest. Her
two brothers had reverted to the usual wasteful, spend¬
thrift, brutal Mexican way. Therefore Don Tomas, in order
to save the hacienda from their destructive hands, had
especially appointed Teresa administrador , and had got the
brothers’ consent to this. After all, they were shiftless
neer-do-wells, and had never shown the slightest desire to
help in the rather burdensome business of managing a large
tequila hacienda, during their father’s life-time. Teresa
had been the one. And during her father’s illness the whole
charge had devolved on her, while her brothers wasted
themselves and their substance in the squashy prostitution-
living of Mexicans of their class, away in the cities.

No sooner was the father dead, however, and Teresa in
charge, than home came the two brothers, big with their
intention to be hacendados. By simple brute force they
ousted their sister, gave orders over her head, jeered at
her, and in crushing her united for once with each other.
They were putting her back into her place as a woman—
that is to say, back into a secluded sort of prostitution, to
which, in their eyes, women belonged.

But they were bullies, and, as bullies, cowards. And
like so many Mexicans of that class, soft and suicidal
towards themselves. They made friends with judges and
generals. They rode about in resplendent charro dress, and
had motor-loads of rather doubtful visitors.

Against their soft, senuous brutality Teresa coin'd do
nothing, and she knew it. They were all soft and sensual,

422

TERESA

423

or sensuous, handsome in their way, open-handed, careless,
but bullies, with no fear at the middle of them.

“ Make yourself desirable, and get a husband for your¬
self,” they said to her.

In their eyes, her greatest crime was that she did not
make herself desirable to men of their sort. That she had
never had a man, that she was not married, made her
almost repulsive to them. What was woman for, but for
loose, soft, prostitutional sex?

“ Do you want to wear the trousers? ” they jeered at
her. “ No, Senorita l Not while there are two men on the
place, you are not going to wear the trousers. No, Senorita !
The trousers, the men wear them. The women keep under
their petticoats that which they are women for.”

Teresa was used to these insults. But they made her
soul burn.

“ You, do you want to be an American woman ? ” they
said to her. “ Go off to America, then, and bob your hair
and wear breeches. Buy a ranch there, and get a husband
to take your orders. Go 1 ”

She went to her lawyers, but they held up their hands.
And she went to Ramdn, whom she had known since she
was a child.

It would have meant a hopeless and ruinous law-suit,
to get the brothers ejected from the hacienda. It would
have meant the rapid ruin of the estate. Ramdn instead
asked Teresa to marry him, and he carefully arranged her
dowry, so that she should always have her own provision.

“ It is a country where men despise sex, and live for it,”
said Ram6n. “ Which is just suicide.**

Ram6n came with his wife, to see Kate. Teresa was
rather small, pale, with a lot of loose black hair and big,
wide black eyes. Yet in her quiet bearing and her well-
closed mouth there was an air of independence and authority.
She had suffered great humiliation at the hands of her
brothers, there was still a certain wanness round her eyes,
the remains of tears of anger and helpless indignation, and
the bitterness of insulted sex. But now she loved Ram6n
with a wild, virgin loyalty. That, too, was evident. He
had saved her sex from the insult, restored it to her in its
pride and its beauty. And in return, she felt an almost
fierce reverence for him.

424

THE PLUMED SERPENT

But with Kate she was shy and rather distant: a little
afraid of the travelled, experienced, rather assertive white¬
skinned woman, the woman of the other race. She sat in
Kate’s salon in her simple white dress with a black gauze
rebozo, her brown hands motionless in her lap, her dark
neck erect, her dark, slender, well-shaped cheek averted.
She seemed, Kate thought, rather like a little sempstress.

But Kate was reckoning without that strange quiescent
power of authority which Teresa also possessed, in her
slight, dark body. And without the black, flashing glances
which rested on her from time to time, from Teresa’s eyes,
full of searching fierceness and fiery misgiving. A fiery
soul, in such a demure, slight, dark body. Sometimes a
muted word came from her mouth, and a constrained smile
moved her lips. But her burning eyes never changed.
She did not even look at Ramon.

“ How much do you charge per word, Chica? ” he asked
her, with a sort of soft fondness.

Then her dark eyes flashed at him, and her mouth gave
a little smile. It was evident she was hopelessly in love
with him, in a sort of trance or muse of love. And she
maintained such a cold sort of blankness towards Kate.

« She despises me,” thought Kate, “ because I can’t be

in love as she is.”

And for one second Kate envied Teresa. The next second,
she despised her. “ The harem type—”

Well, it was Ramdn’s nature to be a sort of Sultan. He
looked very handsome in his white clothes, very serene and
pasha-like in his assurance, yet at the same time, soft,
pleasant, something boyish also in his physical well-being.
In his soft yet rather pasha-like way, he was mixing a
cocktail of gin and vermouth and lime. Teresa watched
him from the corner of her eye. And at the same time,
she watched Kate, the potential enemy, the woman who
talked with men on their own plane.

Kate ;ose to get spoons. At the same moment, he
stepped back from the low table where he was squeezing
a lime, so that he came into slight collision with her. And
Kate noticed again, how quick and subtle was his physical
evasion of her, the soft, almost liquid, hot quickness of
sliding out of contact with her. His natural voluptuousness
avoided her as a flame leans away from a draught.

TERESA

425

She flushed slightly. And Teresa saw the quick flush
under the fair, warm-white skin, the leap of yellow light,
almost like anger, into Kate’s grey-hazel eyes. The moment
of evasion of two different blood-streams.

And Teresa rose and went to Ramdn’s side, bending over
and looking in the tumblers, asking, with that curious
affected childishness of dark women :

“ What do you put in ? ”

** Look ! ” said Ram6n. And with the same curious male
childishness of dark men, he was explaining the cocktail
to her, giving her a little gin in a spoon, to taste.

“ It is an impure tequila,” she said naively.

“ At eight pesos a bottle ? ” he laughed.

“ So much 1 It is much ! ”

She looked into his eyes for a second, and saw all his
face go darker, warmer, as if his flesh were fusing soft
towards her. Her small head poised the prouder. She had
got him back.

“ I-Iarem tricks ! ” said Kate to herself. And she was
somewhat impatient, seeing the big, portentous Ram6n
enveloped in the toils of this little dark thing. She resented
being made so conscious of his physical presence, his full,
male body inside his thin white clothes, the strong, yet soft
shoulders, the full, rich male thighs. It was as if she her¬
self, also, being in the presence of this Sultan, should suc¬
cumb as part of the harem.

What a curious will the little dark woman had ! What
a subtle female power inside her rather skinny body! She
had the power to make him into a big, golden full glory of
a man. Whilst she herself became almost inconspicuous,
save for her big black eyes lit with a tigerish power.

Kate watched in wonder. She herself had known men
who made her feel a queen, who made her feel as if the sky
rested on her bosom and her head was among the stars.
She knew what it was to rise grander and grander, till she
filled the universe with her womanhood.

Now she saw the opposite taking place. This little bit
of a black-eyed woman had an almost uncanny power, to
make Ram6n great and gorgeous in the flesh, whilst she
herself became inconspicuous, almost invisible , save for her
great black eyes. Like a sultan, he was, like a full golden
fruit in the sun, with a strange and magnificent presence.

420

THE PLUMED SERPENT

glamour. And then, by some mysterious power in her dark
little body, the skinny Teresa held bam most completely.

And this was what Ramon wanted. And it made Kate
angry, angry. The big, fluid male, gleaming, was somewhat
repulsive to her. And the tense little female with her pale-
dark face, wan under her great, intense, black eyes, having
all her female being tense in an effort to exalt this big
glistening man, this enraged Kate. She could not bear the
glistening smile in Ramon’s dark eyes, a sort of pasha
satisfaction. And she could not bear the erect, tense
little figure of the dark woman, using her power in this
way.

This hidden, secretive power of the dark female ! Kate
called it harem, and self-prostitution. But was it? Yes,
surely it was the slave approach. Surely she wanted
nothing but sex from him, like a prostitute 1 The ancient
mystery of the female power, which consists in glorifying
the blood-male.

Was it right? Kate asked herself. Wasn’t it degrading
for a woman ? And didn’t it make the man either soft and
sensuous, or else hatefully autocratic?

Yet Kate herself had convinced herself of one thing,
finally : that the clue to all living and to all moving-on
into new living lay in the vivid blood-relation between man
and woman. A man and a woman in this togetherness
were the clue to all present living and future possibility.
Out of this clue of togetherness between a man and a
woman, the whole of the new life arose. It was the quick
of the whole.

And the togetherness needed a balance. Surely it needed
a balance ! And did not this Teresa throw herself entirely
into the male balance, so that all the weight was on the
man’s side ?

Ramon had not wanted Kate. Ram6n had got what he
wanted—this black little creature, who was so servile to
him and so haughty in her own power. Ramdn had never
wanted Kate : except as a friend, a clever friend. As a
woman, no 1—He wanted this little viper of a Teresa.

Cipriano wanted Kate. T. he little general, the strutting
little soldier, he wanted Kate : just for moments. He did
not really want to marry her. He wanted the moments,
no more. She was to give him his moments, and then he

TERESA

427

was off again, to his army, to his men. It was what he
wanted.

It was what she wanted too. Her life was her own 1 It
was not her metier to be fanning the blood in a man, to
make him almighty and blood-glamorous. Her life was her
own !

She rose and went to her bedroom to look for a book
she had promised Ramon. She could not bear the sight of
him in love with Teresa any longer. The heavy, mindless
smile on his face, the curious glisten of his eyes, and the
strange, heavy, lordly aplomb of his body affected her like
a madness. She wanted to run.

This was what they were, these people I Savages, with
the impossible fluid flesh of savages, and that savage way
of dissolving into an awful black mass of desire. Emerging
with the male conceit and haughtiness swelling his blood
and making him feel endless. While his eyes glistened with
a haughty blackness.

The trouble was, that the power of the world, which
she had known until now only in the eyes of blue-eyed
men, who made queens of their women—even if they hated
them for it in the end—was now fading in the blue eyes,
and dawning in the black. In Ramdn’s eyes at this moment
was a steady, alien gleam of pride, and daring, and power,
which she knew was masterly. The same was in Cipriano’s
quick looks. The power of the world was dying in the
blond men, their bravery and their supremacy was leaving
them, going into the eyes of the dark men, who were rous¬
ing at last.

Joachim, the eager, clever, fierce, sensitive genius, who
could look into her soul, and laugh into her soul, with his
blue eyes : he had died under her eyes. And her children,
were not even his children..

If she could have fanned his blood as Teresa now fanned
the blood of Ram6n, he would never have died.

But it was impossible. Every dog has his day.—-And
every race.

Teresa came tapping timidly.

‘‘May I come? ”

“ Do I ” said Kate, rising from her knees and leaving
little piles of books all round the book-trunk.

It was a fairly large room, with doors opening on to the

428

THE PLUMED SERPENT

patio and the sun-hard garden, smooth mango-trees rising
like elephant’s trunks out of the ground, green grass after
the rains, chickens beneath the ragged banana leaves. A
red bird splashed in the basin of water, opening and shutting
brown wings above his pure scarlet, vivid.

But Teresa looked at the room, not out of doors. She
smelt the smell of cigarettes and saw the many cigarette
stumps in the agate tray by the bed. She saw the littered
books, the scattered jewellery, the brilliant New-Mexican
rugs on the Hoor, the Persian curtain hung behind the bed,
the handsome, coloured bedcover, the dresses of dark silk
and bright velvet flung over a trunk, the folded shawls with
their long fringe, the scattered shoes, white, grey, pale-
brown, dark-brown, black, on the floor, the tail Chinese
candlesticks. The room of a woman who lived her own life,
for her own self.

Teresa was repelled, uneasy, and fascinated.

“ How nice this is 1 ” she said, touching the glowing bed¬
cover.

“ A friend made it for me, in England.”

Teresa looked with wonder at everything, especially at
the tangle of jewellery on the dressing-table.

“ Don’t you like those red stones ! ” said Kate, kneeling
again to put the books back, and looking at the brown neck
bent absolvedly over the jewels. Thin shoulders, with a
soft, dark skin, in a bit of a white dress I And loosely
folded masses of black hair held by tortoise-shell pins.—An
insignificant little thing, humble, Kate thought to herself.

But she knew really that Teresa was neither insignificant
nor humble. Under that soft brown skin, and in that
stooping female spine was a strange old power to call up
the blood in a man, and glorify it, and, in some way, keep

it for herself. „ _

On the sewing-table was a length of fine India muslin

which Kate had bought in India, and did not know what
to do with. It was a sort of yellow-peach colour, beautiful,
but it did not suit Kate. Teresa was fingering the gold¬
thread selvedge.

“ It is not organdie? ” she said.

“ No, muslin. Hand-made muslin from India.—vvny
don’t you take it. It doesn’t suit me. It would be perfect

for you.”

TERESA

429

She rose and held the fabric against Teresa’s dark neck,
pointing to the mirror. Teresa saw the warm-yellow muslin
upon herself, and her eyes flashed.

“ No 1 ” she said. “ I couldn’t take it.”

“ Why not ? It doesn’t suit me. I’ve had it lying about
for a year now, and was wondering whether to cut it up

for curtains. Do have it.” . _ #

Kate could be imperious, almost cruel in her giving.

“ I can’t take it from you 1 ”

“ Of course you can l ”

Ram6n appeared in the doorway, glancing round the

room, and at the two women.

“ Look ! ” said Teresa, rather confused. “ The Sefiora
wants to give me this India muslin.”—She turned to him
shyly, with the fabric held to her throat.

“ You look very well in it,” he said, his eyes resting

on her.

“ The Senora ought not to give it to me.”

“ The Senora would not give it you unless she wished

to.”

“ Then ! ” said Teresa to Kate. “ Many thanks \ But
many thanks 1 ”

“ It is nothing,” said Kate.

“ But Ram6n says it suits me.”

“ Yes, doesn’t it suit her 1 ” cried Kate to him. ** It
was made in India for someone as dark as she is. It does
suit her.”

“Very pretty 1'” said Ram6n.

He had glanced round the room, at the different attrac¬
tive things from different parts of the world, and at the
cigarette ends in the agate bowl : the rather weary luxury
and disorder, and the touch of barrenness, of a woman
living her own life.

She did not know what he was thinking. But to herself
she thought: This is the man I defended on that roof. This
is the man who lay with a hole in his back, naked and
unconscious under the lamp. He didn’t look like a Sultan
then.

Teresa must have divined something of her thought, lor
she said, looking at Ram6n :

“ Senora! But for you Ram6n would have been killed.
Always I think of it.”

430

THE PLUMED SERPENT

“ Don’t think of it,” said Kate. “ Something else would
have happened. Anyhow it wasn’t I, it was destiny.”

“ Ah, but you were the destiny 1 ” said Teresa.

“ Now there is a hostess, won’t you come and stay some
time at Jamiltepcc? ” said Ramon.

“ Oh, do ! Do come ! ” cried Teresa.

“ But do you really want me? ” said Kate, incredulous.

“ Yes ! Yes 1 ” cried Teresa.

“ She needs a woman-friend,” said Ramon gently.

“ Yes, I do 1 ” she cried. “ I have never had a true,
true woman-friend : only when I was at school, and we were
girls.”

Kate doubted very much her own capacity for being a
true, true woman-friend to Teresa. She wondered what the
two of them saw in her. As what did they see her?

“ Yes, I should like to come for a few days,” she replied.

“ Oh, yes ! ” cried Teresa. “ When will you come? ”

The day was agreed.

“ And we will write the Song of Malintzi,” said Ram6n.

“ Don’t do that 1 ” cried Kate quickly.

He looked at her, in his slow, wondering way. He could
make her feel, at moments, as if she were a sort of child
and as if he were a ghost.

Kate went to Jamiltepec, and before the two women
knew it, almost, they were making dresses for Teresa,
cutting up the pineapple-coloured muslin. Poor Teresa,
for a bride she had a scanty wardrobe : nothing but her
rather pathetic black dresses that somehow made her look
poor, and a few old white dresses. She had lived for her
father—who had a good library of Mexicana and was all
his life writing a history of the State of Jalisco—and for
the hacienda. And it was her proud boast that Las Yemas
was the only hacienda, within a hundred miles range, which
had not been smashed at all during the revolutions that
followed the flight of Porfirio Diaz.

Teresa had a good deal of the nun in her. But that was
because she was deeply passionate, and deep passion tends
to hide within itself, rather than expose itself to vulgar

contact. , ,,

So Kate pinned the muslin over the brown shoulders,

wondering again at the strange, uncanny softness of the
dark skin, the heaviness of the black hair. Teresa s family,

TERESA 481

the Romeros, had been in Mexico since the early days of
the Conquest.

Teresa wanted long sleeves.

“ My arms are so thin ! ” she murmured, hiding her
slender brown arms with a sort of shame. “ They are not
beautiful like yours.”

Kate was a strong, full-developed woman of forty, with
round, strong white arms.

“ No ! ” she said to Teresa. “ Your arms are not thin :
they are exactly right for your figure, and pretty and young
and brown.”

“ But make the sleeves long, to the wrist,” pleaded
Teresa.

And Kate did so, realizing it became the other woman’s
nature better.

“ The men here don’t like little thin women,” said Teresa,
wistfully.

“ One doesn’t care what the men like,” said Kate. “ Do
you think Don Ram6n wishes you were a plump partridge ?”

Teresa looked at her with a smile in her dark, big bright
eyes, that were so quick, and in many ways so unseeing.

“ Who knows 1 ” she said. And in her quick, mischievous
smile it was evident she would like also, sometimes, to be
a plump partridge.

Kate now saw more of the hacienda life than she had
done before. When Ram6n was at home, he consulted
his overseer, or administrator, every morning. But already
Teresa was taking this work off his hands. She would see
to the estate.

Ram6n was a good deal absent, either in Mexico or in
Guadalajara, or even away in Sonora. He was already
famous and notorious throughout the country, his name was
a name to conjure with. But underneath the rather ready
hero-worship of the Mexicans, Kate somehow felt their
latent grudging. Perhaps they took more satisfaction in
ultimately destroying their heroes, than in temporarily rais¬
ing them high. The real perfect moment was when the hero
was downed.

And to Kate, sceptic as she was, it seemed much more
likely that they were sharpening the machete to stick in
Ramdn’s heart, when he got a bit too big for them, than
anything else. Though, to be sure, there was Cipriano to

432

THE PLUMED SERPENT

reckon with. And Cipriano was a little devil whom they
quite rightly feared. And Cipriano, for once, was faithful.
He was, to himself, Huitzilopochtli, and to this he would
maintain a demonish faith. He was Huitzilopochtli, Ramon
was Quetzalcoatl. To Cipriano this was a plain and living
fact. And he kept his army keen as a knife. Even the
President would not care to run counter to Cipriano. And
the President was a brave man too.

“ One day,” he said, “ we will put Quetzalcoatl in Puebla
Cathedral, and Huitzilopochtli in Mexico Cathedral and
Malintzi in Guadalupe. The day will come, Ramon.”

“ We will see that it comes,” Ramon replied.

But Ramon and Montes suffered alike from the deep,
devilish animosity the country sent out in silence against
them. It was the same, whover was in power : the Mexicans
seemed to steam with invisible, grudging hate, the hate
of demons foiled in their own souls, whose only motive is
to foil everything, everybody, in the everlasting hell of
cramped frustration.

This was the dragon of Mexico, that Ram6n had to fight.
Montes, the President, had it to fight the same. And it
shattered his health. Cipriano also had it up against him.
But he succeeded best. With his drums, with his dances
round the fire, with his soldiers kept keen as knives he drew
real support from his men. He grew stronger and more
brilliant.

Ranidn also, at home in his own district, felt the power
flow into him from his people. He was their chief, and by
his effort and his power he had almost overcome their
ancient, fathomless resistance. Almost he had awed them
back into the soft mystery of living, awed them until the
tension of their resistant, malevolent wills relaxed. At
home, he would feel his strength upon him.

But away from home, and particularly in the city of
Mexico, he felt himself bled, bled, bled by the subtle,
hidden malevolence of the Mexicans, and the ugly negation
of the greedy, mechanical foreigners, birds of prey forever
alighting in the cosmopolitan capital.

While Ramon was away, Kate stayed with Teresa. The
two women had this in common, that they felt it was better
to stand faithfully behind a really brave man, than to push
forward into the ranks of cheap and obtrusive women. And

TERESA

433

this united them. A certain Seep, ultimate faithfulness in
each woman, to her own man who needed her fidelity, kept
Kate and Teresa kindred to one another.

The rainy season had almost passed, though throughout
September and even in October occasional heavy downpours
fell. But the wonderful Mexican autumn, like a strange,
inverted spring, was upon the land. The waste places
bloomed with pink and white cosmos, the strange
wild trees flowered in a ghostly way, forests of small sun¬
flowers shone in the sun, the sky was a pure, pure blue, the
floods of sunshine lay tempered on the land, that in part
was flooded with water, from the heavy rains.

The lake was very full, strange and uneasy, and it had
washed up a bank of the wicked water-hyacinths along all
its shores. The wild-fowl were coming from the north,
clouds of wild ducks like dust in the high air, sprinkling
the water like weeds. Many, many wild fowl, grebe, cranes,
and white gulls of the inland seas, so that the northern
mystery seemed to have blown so far south. There was a
smell of water in the land, and a sense of soothing. For
Kate firmly believed that part of the horror of the Mexican
people came from the unsoothed dryness of the land and the
untempered crudity of the flat-edged sunshine. If only
there could be a softening of water in the air, and a haze
above trees, the unspoken and unspeakable malevolence
would die out of the human hearts.

Kate rode out often with Teresa to see the fields. The
suger-cane in the inner valley was vivid green, and rising
tall, tall. The peons were beginning to cut it with their
sword-like machetes, filling the bullock-wagons, to haul
the cane to the factory in Sayula. On the dry hill-slopes
the spikey tequila plant—a sort of maguey—flourished in
its iron' wickedness. Low wild cactuses put forth rose-like
blossoms, wonderful and beautiful for such sinister plants.
The beans were gathered fTom the bean-fields, some
gourds and squashes still sprawled their uncanny weight
across the land. Red chiles hung on withering plants, red
tomatoes sank to the earth. Some maize still reared its
flags, there was still young corn to eat on the cob. The
banana crop was small, the children came in with the little
wild yellow tejocote apples, for making preserves. Teresa
Was making preserves, even with the late figs and peaches.

134

THE PLUMED SERPENT

On the trees, the ponderous mango trees, some fruit was
again orange-yellow and ripe, but the most still hung in
strings, heavy and greenish and dropping like the testes of
bulls.

It was autumn in Mexico, with wild duck on the waters,
and hunters with guns, and small wild doves in the trees.
Autumn in Mexico, and the corning of the dry season, with
the sky going higher and higher, pure pale blue, the sunset
arriving with a strange flare of crystal yellow light. With
the coffee berries turning red on the struggling bushes under
the trees, and bougainvillea in the strong light glowing with
a glow of magenta colour so deep you could plunge your
arms deep in it. With a few hummingbirds in the sunshine,
and the fish in the waters gone wild, and the flies, that
steamed black in the first rains, now passing away again.

Teresa attended to everything, and Kate helped. Whether
it was a sick peon in one of the little houses, or the hosts
of bees from the hives under the mangoes, or the yellow,
yellow bees-wax to be made into little bowlfuls, or the
preserves, or the garden, or the calves, or the bit of butter
and the little fresh cheeses made of strands of curd, or the
turkeys to be overlooked : she saw to it along with Teresa.
And she wondered at the steady, urgent, efficient will which
had to be exerted all the time. Everything was kept going
by a heavy exertion of will. If once the will of the master
broke, everything would break, and ruin would overtake
the place almost at once. No real relaxation, ever. Always
the sombre, insistent will.

Ram6n arrived home one evening in November, from a
long journey to Sonora. He had come overland from Tepic,
and twice had been stopped by floods. The rains, so late,
were very unusual. He was tired and remote-seeming.
Kate’s heart stood still a moment as she thought : He goes
so remote, as if he might go away altogether into death.

It was cloudy again, with lightning beating about on the
horizons. But all was very still. She said good-night
early, and wandered down her own side of the terrace, to
the look-out at the end, which looked on to the lake. Every¬
thing was dark, save for the intermittent pallor of light-

D1 /fnd she was startled to see, in a gleam of lightning.
Teresa sitting with her back to the wall of the open terrace,

TERESA

485

Ram6n lying with his head in her lap, while she slowly
pushed her fingers through his thick black hair. They were
as silent as the night.

Kate gave a startled murmur and said :

“ I’m so sorry 1 I didn’t know you were here.”

“ I wanted to be under the sky ! ” said Ramon, heaving
himself to rise.

“ Oh, don’t move ! ” said Kate. “ It was stupid of me
to come here. You are tired.”

“ Yes,” he said, sinking again. “ I am tired. These
people make me feel I have a hole in the middle of me.
So 1 have come back to Teresa.”

44 Yes ! ” said Kate. “ One isn’t the Living Quetzalcoatl
for nothing. Of course they eat holes in you.—Really, is
it worth it ?—To give yourself to be eaten away by them.”

“ It must be so,” he said. 44 The change has to be
made. And some man has to make it. I sometimes
wish it wasn’t I.”

44 So do I wish it. So does Teresa. One wonders if it
isn’t better to be just a man,” said Kate.

But Teresa said nothing.

“ One does what one must. And after all, one is always
just a man,” he said. “ And if one has wounds—a la
guerre comme a la guerre 1 ”

His voice came out of the darkness like a ghost.

44 Ah 1 ” sighed Kate. 44 It makes one wonder what a
man is, that he must needs expose himself to the horrors of
all the other people.”

There was silence for a moment.

44 Man is a column of blood, with a voice in it,” he said.
44 And when the voice is still, and he is only a column
of blood, he is better.”

She went away to her room sadly, hearing the sound of
infinite exhaustion in his voice. As if he had a hole, a
wound in the middle of him. She could almost feel it, in
her own bowels.

And if, with his efforts, he killed himself?—Then, she
•aid, Cipriano would come apart, and it would be all finished.

Ah, why should a man have to make these efforts on
behalf of a beastly, malevolent people who weren’t worth
it 1 Better let the world come to an end, if that was what

it wanted.

436

THE PLUMED SERPENT

She thought of Teresa soothing him, soothing him and
saying nothing. And him like a great helpless, wounded
thing ! It was rather horrible, really. Herself, she would
have to expostulate, she would have to try to prevent him.
Why should men damage themselves with this useless
struggling and fighting, and then come home to their women
to be restored !

To Kate, the fight simply wasn’t worth one wound. Let
the beastly world of man come to an end, if that was its
destiny, as soon as possible. Without lifting a finger to
prevent it.—Live one’s own precious life, that was given
but once, and let the rest go its own hellish way.

She would have had to try to prevent Ram6n from giving
himself to destruction this way. She was willing for him
to be ten L